There Will Come Soft Rains

In Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," the completely automated smart home is the only structure still standing in the middle of a nuclear wasteland in Allendale, California....

Personification is a form of figurative language in which an author attributes human qualities to something that is not human. There is a great deal of personification in Ray Bradbury's short story...

The very fact that Bradbury's story takes its title from Teasdale's poem serves as a powerful confirmation that the story is very much in conversation with it. Indeed, not only does Bradbury...

The story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is set in the wake of a nuclear explosion, which has flattened the city of Allendale, California. Among the ruins of the city stands a solitary home, and the...

One prominent literary device that Bradbury uses in “There Will Come Soft Rains” is symbolism. For example, consider how the dog who dies from radiation poisoning was once “huge and fleshy” and is...

In this story, a house goes on functioning for awile and then "dies" in a fire after all the human inhabitants are killed in a nuclear war. Similes likening the house to nature, magic and children...

The voice or tone of the automated home system in addressing the "inhabitants" is neutral and not conscious of the situation. The inhabitants—two adults and two children—have died a long time ago...

As the previous educators have noted, the house is destroyed by a fire after a tree branch goes through the kitchen window, knocking a bottle of cleaning solvent onto the stovetop. What is really...

On the broadest level, the main conflict of the story is human technology versus nature, but this can be understood more specifically as human pride coming into conflict with the natural world. The...

An allusion is a reference in a piece of literature to another work of writing or to a cultural or historical event. The main allusion is to Sara Teasdale's poem "There Will Come Soft Rains." Part...

Ray Bradbury is known for having a very lyrical writing style, rich with the use of metaphor and poetic turns of phrases. "There Will Come Soft Rains" is no exception to this trend, and the passage...

The title of Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is borrowed from Sara Teasdale's poem of the same name. In both the poem and the story, rain symbolizes the way nature goes about...

The biggest irony in “There Will Come Soft Rains” is that technology is supposed to make life easier for people, yet it has led to the destruction of the human race. The automated home demonstrates...

The house serves to provide friendly reminders that mirror the family's movements throughout the day. First, it provides a welcoming invitation to rise from bed at 7 a.m. A few moments later, it...

The rain signifies nature's way or function of cleansing itself. And, following this nuclear explosion and the decimation of the human population, there is the sense that nature is cleansing itself...

In Ray Bradbury's celebrated short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," a completely automated smart home in Allendale, California continues to perform its routine mechanical functions in the wake...

The west side of the house is burnt black except for five white spots. One of these spots is the silhouette of a woman bending to pick flowers "as in a photograph." Similes most often use "like" or...

The author describes the nursery as a place that feels alive with animals and insects and plant life. The floor is woven to feel like a "crisp, cereal meadow," and the walls teem with moving films...

From examining the automated home in Bradbury's “There Will Come Soft Rains,” it's possible to conclude that the society which created it was technologically advanced. The home is a truly...

The family-two parents, a son, and a daughter are dead as a result of an atomic bomb blast. The only thing that remains of them are five splotches against the house. The family dog arrives at the...

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," the dog survives the nuclear blast but later dies of radiation sickness. Its body lies in the parlor for an hour and, by two o'clock, the "regiments" of mechanical...

The science fiction short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury tells of a single house still standing in a decimated city after a horrifying atomic war. The house goes through its...

Bradbury personifies the technologically advanced smart home by describing its voice, eyes, and behaviors. The empty automated home is the last remaining house in a city of rubble and ashes...

Although we know that the family plays outside in the yard—as images of them throwing a ball, picking flowers, and otherwise engaging in outdoors activities is etched on the wall of the house after...

The entire context of this quote is as follows: The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the...

The chronology is important in this story because it creates suspense and helps the reader understand the effect of no longer having humans. Is time important when there are no longer people around...

The house left standing after a nuclear war symbolizes the human worship of technology. In the story, the house is pictured as a god. For example, Bradbury writes: The house was an altar with ten...

In Ray Bradbury's dystopian short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," a single house is left standing in the year 2026, after an atomic blast kills the inhabitants of the house and the rest of the...

At first glance, Bradbury seems to portray a positive view of the future. In his version of the future, people have an easier life because technology has taken over all of our domestic chores. The...

In terms of broad geographical perspective, the image that stands out is of this one remaining house amidst a city that has been destroyed. The house is the only one left, and is surrounded by...

The house was inhabited by a family of four before the nuclear blast killed them. The house in the story is fully automated. Its job is to take care of its family, which consists of a mother, a...

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," the house is an unthinking, emotionless machine, so the story's mood stays, for the most part, as being matter-of-fact. However, in the moments leading up to the...

Bradbury's story is set in an empty house. All the humans who once lived in it have been killed, but the house, which behaves almost as a human character, continues functioning as if the owners are...

The spots of paint are all that is left of the people who lived in the house. There are no people alive to tell the story in “There Will Come Soft Rains.” There has been some kind of recent...

In Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains," the house continues its activity even when the family members have died and no one is living in it any longer, because that is what it has been...

Sara Teasdale's poem was an inspiration for Bradbury's story of the same name. In part, he includes the poem as tribute to Teasdale, but more importantly, because it underlines his main theme or...

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," Bradbury describes five silhouettes of a family on the wall. We can infer information about the family, based on the type and nature of these silhouettes. Firstly,...

In accord with the previous posts, Bradbury sees life going without a mere whimper, as does T. S. Eliot. The danger of technology, Bradbury warns, is that it does not care that the harm comes to...

After spending a day attempting to serve humans who no longer exist in this house, the house begins "to die" at ten o'clock p.m. Outside, a storm increases in intensity, and a tree crashes through...

Because there are no human beings in this story—they have all been killed in a nuclear holocaust—Bradbury personifies the house and nature. At the end of the story, Bradbury personifies the fire, a...

The clock in the house has a voice which calls out the morning wake up call as well as breakfast and other events and reminders. This is not very unusual to us because these reminders are given to...

The breakfast stove churns out a lovely breakfast for the people who are no longer there, and a while later, it disposes of the food, which has been left uneaten. The narrator says that "hot water...

Ray Bradbury's anti-war science fiction short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" was first published in Collier's magazine in May 1950. The story was published later that year in a revised version...

The significance of the allusions to two great artists deserves a further look: The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off...

The house continues to serve food and clean up after itself because it is nothing more than a mechanical object that has been programmed to behave in this way. It has no way of knowing that the...

In Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," the house is the last voice to speak as it continuously says, "Today is August 5, 2057, today is August 5, 2057, today is ...," as it burns down....