In his hatred of materialism and modern man's insatiable hunger for technology, Ray Bradbury has disaster strike the house of "There Will Come Soft Rains."  The music of the house is silenced, but the memory of Sara Teasdale's poem lingers:

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Nature, who is not greedy and heedless of life, will survive; man will not.  He will be destroyed by his hubris that drives him to create more and more machines to do his work, until, finally, there is little need for him.  Clearly, Bradbury's story is an indictment against the materialism of the twentieth century with its desire to have technology even think for man. "But too late" Bradbury writes, as man has destroyed everything in a nuclear battle.