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In "There Will Come Soft Rains," how is the nursery described and what is its significance?
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The narrator describes the nursery in "There Will Come Soft Rains" as having living walls that play “hidden films” that seem to come alive with realism. Someone in the room would be able not only to see what this environment looks like but also to hear, smell, and even feel how it would be like in real life.
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 of animals grazing. It is ironic that this room inside a house has been decorated to approximate nature. Why not just go out into nature? The nursery's decor seems to be an indictment of the overuse and misuse of technology. There is no need to manufacture sightings of bees or lions or butterflies if humanity is working to preserve real bees and lions and butterflies. The irony is that people have put all their efforts into creating the spectacle of these animals without, evidently, worrying about the survival of the animals in nature.
There's an air of unreality about Bradbury's description of the nursery, with its living walls adorned with bright, moving images of...
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exotic animals and its floor woven to resemble "a crisp, cereal meadow." These are not the kind of features one would normally associate with a nursery. But then, this is no ordinary nursery, and this is no ordinary house.
The air of unreality is heightened further by the iron roaches and aluminum crickets that crawl across the floor. The whole nursery has been constructed in such a way as to separate children from the reality of their immediate environment, to take them away to an exotic fantasy world full of wild flora and fauna. This is a part of an automated house which served to isolate those who lived in it from the harsh realities of the world outside.
The adults who once lived here were just as blissfully ignorant of the horrors that awaited them—of the very real dangers of a nuclear holocaust—as their children. In that sense, one could argue that the nursery is a metaphor for the technological fantasy world that closed people off from society, preventing them from facing up to the consequences of possessing nuclear weapons.
The first description of the nursery is that it "glowed." The nursery walls are lighted with images and films and this is the source of the glow. But Bradbury might be comparing this glow to the radioactive glow of the town following the atomic blast. The point here is to show the dangers of irresponsible uses of technology. It is technology that has created this virtual world of the nursery but technology is also responsible for the atomic weapons. Both the nursery and the aftermath of the bomb create an artificial, superficial glow, both inauspiciously fake and unnatural.
The films on the glass walls "lived." This is also a subtle critique of technology. The glass walls "live" on but the people have been killed. What keeps the walls alive (technology) has also led to the deaths of the family. It is therefore, ironic to say that the virtual, inorganic walls "lived." Initially, the nursery walls are "alive" with signs of life. "Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance." The nursery gives the appearance of life. The reality is that all life has been snuffed out by the bomb.
Closing the description of the nursery, the narrator adds "It was the children's hour." This means that the house and nursery were programmed at this certain time in order to let the children play in this virtual world of animals and meadows. But the phrase "children's hour" has sinister connotations as well, since it can mean the hour (time) of the children's deaths.
How is the nursery described in "There Will Come Soft Rains," and why is it significant?
The nursery walls show scenes from nature, but with images that are enhanced and unnatural. We are told the nursery has walls of glass behind which "color and fantasy" are on display.
The nursery walls reveal the technological society's divorce from the natural world. The lions are blue, the panthers are lilac, and the antelopes are pink, colors these animals would not be in real life.
In other ways, the imagery of the nursery walls confuses nature. The hive of bees is described as "matted yellow," as if it has lion's fur, while the lion is described having a "bumble" of a purr, as if he is a bee. These are subtle alterations of reality, but nevertheless suggest the way technology distorts nature:
There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion.
The nursery's decor is significant because it might suggest that separation from the natural world left humans vulnerable to a holocaust.
Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" is about a high-tech house that continues its automated regimen despite the fact the humans who occupied the house have been destroyed in a nuclear attack.
The house basically runs the lives of the humans. It gets them up in the morning. It provides all the meals, washes the dishes, cleans the floors and even deals the cards for Bridge. When the children come home from school at four-thirty in the afternoon they are treated to scenes of a fantastical African wilderness with "blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance" on the video screens of the nursery walls. It is similar to the lethal nursery wall in another Bradbury short story, "The Veldt."
Technology has even taken over the imaginations of the children. There is no reason to actually visit the outdoors or to fantasize, as children like to do. It's all in the walls. There's no need for them to actually be creative. The house provides for their every need.
Bradbury's story is a condemnation of how technology has come to control our lives. Despite the fact the story was published in 1960 it predicts the future quite well. Computers speak to us, robots clean and, of course, 3-D video screens entertain us.
How is the nursery described in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?
The narrator describes the nursery as having glowing glass walls that show all sorts of animals, both real and fantastic. There are yellow giraffes as well as blue lions and lilac panthers frolicking across the surfaces. The narrator says that hidden films played and “the walls lived.” The realism in the nursery must be extraordinary.
The floor of the nursery is woven to look and feel like a meadow with a variety of grasses and grains, and metal insects even scurry across the surface of the floor while butterflies frolic in the warm air. One can hear what sounds like a huge beehive buzzing with thousands of bees and the rumbling of a lion purring. One can hear the sound of hooves, as though animals are running past, as well as the sound of rain falling onto the grassy floor. There’s even a “sharp aroma of animal spoors,” which are the droppings that the animals, were they real, would have left behind.
In short, the narrator describes the nursery as a feast for the senses. Even though the animals and this scene are obviously not real, it all looks, sounds, feels, and smells like it is real. It feels as though the observer is transported to Africa rather than simply shown what it looks like, as wallpaper or paint would do. Instead, this nursery actually creates an experience.
What is significant about the nursery's decoration in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?
In "There Will Come Soft Rains," Ray Bradbury describes the nursery as a garishly colorful artificial environment:
Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived.
It would be exciting enough for most children to see these animals in their natural colors, but the designer of the nursery has decided to improve upon nature by creating something brighter. This hubristic approach to technology is characteristic of the house as a whole. Everything is overengineered. The reader is never told precisely what happened to the people and the neighboring houses, but it seems that the disaster which claimed them may have had something to do with their overreliance on nature and overdependence on technology. There is a clear irony in the statement that the walls lived, since the children who once played here are no longer alive. This is part of the larger irony of a living house continuing to minister to a dead family.
The nursery, however, soon loses its color and liveliness. By the end of the paragraph which describes the nursery, the rains have come, reflecting the soft rains in the title. After this, the scene on the nursery walls is barren and deserted:
Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched grass, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes.
Finally, even the artificial nursery which no longer has any children to play in it is also empty of fake animals. The emptiness of the walls reflects both the empty house and the desolation outside it.