How is the house described in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

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 following a devastating nuclear attack. Despite the fact that the inhabitants died during the attack, the house continues to mechanically function flawlessly as it prepares meals, cleans dishes, issues reminders, and sweeps the home. Bradbury's personification gives the house a life of its own as he describes how it "quivered at each sound," which seems to border on "mechanical paranoia."

The technologically advanced nursery walls produce realistic images of animals, and mechanical mice dart out of the walls to immaculately clean the floors while the ominous incinerator in the cellar burns the debris like an "evil Baal in a dark corner." Bradbury also uses imagery to describe the daily functions of the house, which are compared to "magic tricks" as the computerized mechanisms perform their programmed tasks. Whenever a branch falls onto the house and starts a fire, the house even tries to save itself by shutting the doors and attempting to put out the flames. However, the house cannot prevent the fire from spreading, despite the mechanical snakes spraying water from the attic. Bradbury continues to personify the home by writing,

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air (5).

Eventually, the home crumbles to the ground as its voice fades into the night. Overall, Bradbury uses personification and imagery to describe the technologically advanced, automated smart home, which is programmed to function as a human.

The house is characterized as an almost living entity, and is given an abundance of descriptions that detail both its structure and contents, as well as its "behavior".

The house is specifically provided with a number of humanizing elements, specifically, things which we would normally associate with a living human. It has electric "eyes", it "sings" and "screams", an electric "brain, a metal "throat" and oak "bones", and the house "quivers" and "shudders" in protective paranoia. These elements are specifically intended to make the house seem like an ecosystem, one which is specifically intended to care for its inhabitants, and is more of a companion than a literal servant.

In having its own "thoughts" and behaviors, yet being unable to recognize the absence of its owners, the house seems something like a dog; its existence is defined by its family, and it lacks the ability to adapt and rationalize beyond that dynamic. This is perhaps supported by the point in the story in which the dog enters the home and dies, foreshadowing that the house, too, will die, and that its existence is pointless, just as when the dog chases its tail just before dying.

The house is also described as being the only one left standing amid a glowing, radioactive wasteland, the aftermath of an atomic blast. Even more than its ignorance of the fate of its owners, the house is ignorant of the collapse of society around it. 

What word best describes the house's actions in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Probably the most appropriate word to describe the actions of the house is "mechanical." The advanced technology of the house was meant to make the house more "alive" and able to provide for the human inhabitants in making their lives more convenient. In the story, the house is described with vibrant terms and it is often personified. This is done to illustrate the irony that it is in fact not alive.

Advanced technology can improve human life but it can also have a dangerous side (as it did in this story). When the story begins, an atomic explosion has already occurred. There are no humans left in the house and probably in the immediate area. All that's left is the computerized house that speaks, sings, feeds, and shelters the family who is no longer alive to enjoy it. The house is continually personified but it really continues to behave like a machine. Since the house is a computer, it continues to function according to its programming, unaware that the family it "cared" for is now gone. Note the first line of the story. The house is personified but only because it is programmed "as if" it were alive and sentient: 

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. 

This story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of technology. Bradbury was not against technology. He merely recognized the inherent dangers; not just with atomic weapons but also with things (such as the house) that detract from the human experience. The more the house does for the family, the less the family has to do for themselves. In this respect, another appropriate word for the house (at least when the family was still alive) would be "lulling" or maybe even something like "soul-stealing" since the house, in doing more than the family, becomes more alive than the family itself. But after the family is gone and the house continues to administer to them, one could also say the house is "unaware" or "unconscious," something to emphasize the fact that the house is only seemingly, but not actually, alive. This is interesting because the house is sort of the main "character" in the story. 

How does personification of the house develop the setting in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," the house is both a part of the setting and a character in the story. By using personification, Bradbury describes the actions of the house as if those actions were being completed by a living thing. The house performs tasks such as announcing the time, preparing breakfast, and providing a weather report. During these first few paragraphs, the story seems to be a happy one. However, it soon becomes clear that these actions are being done for humans that no longer exist. As a result, these tasks that seem to be done out of care and love are actually cold and mechanical. The tone of the story evolves as Bradbury continues to provide more information. For example, the toast that was once "perfectly brown" becomes "like stone." The house is said to have developed an "old-maidenly preoccupation" with protecting itself. Through the use of human-like qualities given to the house, Bradbury shows the development of the setting from one that appears one way in the beginning to something quite different and more tragic in the end.

In the short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” Ray Bradbury personifies the house to set the story in the future. He gives life to the futuristic house and includes the dates August 4 and August 5, 2026. The house talks, cajoles, cooks, cleans, and even reads poetry in a story that has no human characters. There is a decrepit dog and the nature outside the house. As you read the story, you become familiar with the setting as the house proceeds through its set schedule of the day even though there are no humans living in it. As each hour passes, the house lets the reader know what should be happening. Breakfast makes itself in the kitchen, the automated mice come out of the walls to clean, the children are called to go to school, and Mrs. McClellan is read her poetry at night. There are drinks and games set up in the garden until fire consumes the house to its death. One wall wakes up the next morning to the desolate scene.

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," which "human" verbs describe the house?

You are right in emphasising the way that, as you call them, "human" verbs are used in the story to portray the extent of technological development and how we are presented with a fully functioning house in this great short story with no need for humans to do anything. Consider how the voice-clock "sings" and the voice tells the absent humans all they need to do:

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills."

With no human characters therefore, this story is an ironic reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. It is also a dire warning about the limits and dangers of technology. By showing us a house that operates without the need for humans to do anything, Bradbury presents us with a future level of technological sophistication that amazes us - until we remember that technology has literally done away with the need for humans - both in the sense that the house does everything, but also in the sense that technology has destroyed mankind. It is this message that the use of "human" verbs emphasises in the story.

How is the house characterized in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The house can be seen as a character in this short story because it is personified: it is given human traits as if it is a living person.

The house, like a stunned person might, keeps on functioning after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed its entire civilization. It is personified, for example, as having:

kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

In passages such as the above, the house is depicted as if it having human emotional responses to the strange events in the outside world. It is shown as drawing in on itself and becoming as paranoid and reclusive as an isolated real person—such as a single woman living alone might when faced with a troubling or uncertain situation.

The house's persistence in going through its normal routines, such as preparing breakfast or bringing out the card table, even when there is nobody to receive these services, gives the home a distinct sense of personality. Like a character in a story it has its set characteristics and habitual ways of responding to situations. We could easily imagine a person trying to go on with routines that no longer made sense after a disaster.

The house is like a character, too, in that we feel for it in what seems to be its distress trying to cope with a situation it has not been prepared for with the inadequate responses it has at its disposal.