What is Bradbury's main purpose in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

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 city of Allendale, California. The short story presents a clear warning against the current disastroous trajectory of society. As civilization advances, technology advances within it, creating systems such as "smart homes" that actually exist today (something that only thirty years ago would have been considered a work of science fiction). The home that is described in the short story is only a more advanced manifestation of the smart homes that exist today. The bombs that destroy Allendale are unspecified, but they certainly mirror the bombs that exist today that have the capability of wiping out entire cities. Devoid of human life, the smart appliances of the home continue to go about their daily tasks, unaware of the death and carnage around them, until the house catches fire and burns to the ground.

Bradbury is warning us against a future that could come at any moment, given the level of technology and weaponry that exists in the nations of the Global North. While those who can afford "smart homes" experience the luxury of technology, those who live in places like Palestine and Syria experience the complete and utter destruction and horror of advanced technology as cutting-edge weaponry and the surveillance systems of militaries destroy millions of lives. On the southern border of the United States, cutting-edge surveillance technology is being used to track down migrants fleeing from war-torn and economically impoverished countries. These migrants are then held in what amounts to concentration camps along the US border, guarded by the manpower and technology of the border patrol, military, and police. Certainly, aside from the atomic destruction of an entire city in the United States, this dystopian reality that Bradbury has written about in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is already here.

What is Bradbury's main purpose in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Perhaps Bradbury's main purpose in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is to observe that no matter how technologically accomplished we become, humanity's overriding inclination is to wage war. And after the development of the devastating weapons unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Bradbury observes that the stakes in waging war have grown frighteningly higher than previous wars.

Bradbury also suggests that we, as designers of the technology that powers the story's empty house, may be reflecting our own diminishing humanity. The robots who first let in the whining dog and then clean up its carcass are "angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience." Of all the human emotions to assign to robots, Bradbury chose anger, not compassion.

Another "convenience" of the house reflects man's diminishing humanity. A robot voice reads aloud a poem at day's end; literature is, ironically, considered a discipline of the humanities, yet it is left up to a machine to coldly recite what perhaps Bradbury felt should remain the domain of the human voice.

What is Bradbury's main purpose in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

In my opinion, the main purpose of this story is to warn people of the dangers of relying too much on technology.

In the society in the story, people have come to rely on technology for everything.  The house that we hear about takes care of its inhabitants in every possible way.  They really do not have to do anything anymore.  At the same time, the people have also come to have too much military technology.  This technology is what ends up destroying the whole city (and maybe the whole society).

So Bradbury is saying that people have devised too much technology and have come to rely on it too much.

What is Bradbury's main purpose in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The theme of Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is an ironic commentary on the state of mankind in a post-atomic world. On one hand, humans have advanced to the point that they can create a house which has eliminated all of the drudgery of domestic life, including cooking, cleaning, and setting up furniture. Technology has advanced to a level where the house itself can provide entertainment, such as automatically programmed audio of the family's favorite poem and intricate video which emanates from the walls of the children's nursery. Had it not been for the bad luck of a tree limb crashing through a kitchen window, it might be presumed that the house could continue on with its daily routine far into a future devoid of humans. The house is truly a marvel of human ingenuity.

On the other hand, a culture which has advanced to the seeming pinnacle of technological invention is unable to control its lust for war. Despite major advancements in creativity and the machinery to make it a reality, humans are seemingly no different than they have been for centuries, always moving on to the next conflict that results in death and destruction. Unfortunately, a world which is willing to use nuclear weapons may be a world which, in the words of Sara Teasdale, will not mind "If mankind perished utterly."

Analyze Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains."

There is a great analysis of this Ray Bradbury short story here on eNotes at the link below. Bradbury got the title from a poem of the same name by Sara Teasdale, which is also about an end-of-the-world scenario. In this short story, man has succeeded in destroying himself with nuclear weapons and all that is left behind are machines. Even the family dog cannot survive and dies of radiation poisoning. The themes are of man vs automation, death and fear and science vs nature. This story is from the collection Martian Chronicles in which several stories explore the same themes - man's capability to destroy himself with his own creations.

Analyze Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains."

Much like the walls which contain the images of the people and animals burned into the sides of buildings or bridges in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb in 1945--- in Ray Bradbury’s story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” in 2026, it is a post-apocalyptic 2026, and the residual images of a family have been burned into a fence.  This is the only human sightings in the story. The story, written in 1950, found an accepting audience based on the testing of the hydrogen bombs of the period.

The family is gone but the house continues to run like clockwork as though they would be coming down from a night’s sleep.  Technology has created a world where the robots survive; but, the human beings have killed themselves with the “bomb.” Man created the technology, and the house does not care if man is there or not.

The title for the story comes from Sara Teasdale’s poem of the same title. The poem brings out the essence of the story:

There will come soft rains …

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly…

In the story, it appears that life goes on without man. Ironically, this is not really the case. The family dog suffering from dehydration and burns comes in the house and dies.  The city is nothing but rubble, and radiation still fills the air.

One of the themes of the story is presented by Bradbury when he questions man’s reliance on technology when the robots are incapable of saving or even helping to save human beings from annihilation. The house works too well. It has neither feelings nor emotions. The little mice scoop up the family dog and burn the body and the house never flinches.

Cleverly, Bradbury predicts some of the inventions that come to pass later in our more modern times. Yet, the robots do not have personalities and emotions. They cannot solve problems for which they have not been programmed. When the fire begins, the robots continue to perform their tasks but cannot save the house.

Bradbury thematically emphasizes that the technological advances were wonderful when the family was there to live and enjoy the conveniences.  The lack of humanity makes the machinery purposeless.  The house does everything with or without the family.  The house is merely a house without the people to make it a home.

When the fire envelops the house, the chaos seems psychotic.

At ten o'clock the house began to die.
The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant! "Fire!" screamed a voice. The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

Trying to continue each part of the house’s job, the attic brain overloads and sends the house to its end in a frenzy.  Coming from its fiery grave, the voice of the clock announces the next day.