Does "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury contain symbolism?

The final showdown, so to speak, between the mechanized house and the casual act of nature symbolizes the fact that nature is, without even trying to be, far more powerful than anything human beings can create. The house has gone about its business for some time now, doing the chores and making the food it has always done. However, one day, "the wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window." This tree bough smashes a container of cleaning solvent over the stove, and this solvent bursts into flames, initiating the fire that spreads quickly throughout the entire house. The house does try to save itself, closing off rooms and sending out the mechanical mice to spray water at the flames and sending streams of water down the walls to prevent the fire from spreading. But the wind "blew and sucked upon the fire" so that the heat breaks the windows and allows the fire to grow.

Despite all of the thoughtful devices human beings have created to deal with fire, to prevent such catastrophes from occurring, it only takes one solitary tree branch and a stiff wind to destroy it all. Nature, with very little movement at all, is able to reduce the house and all its fancy technology to ash, figuratively showing how much more powerful nature is than anything man can create.

Does "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury contain symbolism?

This short story opens with a "voice-clock" repeating reminders of date and time into the stillness and emptiness of a house devoid of people. This clock symbolizes the changes that have happened due to humanity's constant need for technological "progress." The clock is a reminder that humans have acquired the changes which they sought to make their lives easier, and their worlds have become so automated that they don't even need to remember anniversaries or the dates bills are due. The technology of the house maintains reminders of all this information for them. Yet as the voice-clock issues its reminders to an empty house, the ultimate message is clear—these improvements in their daily lives are now meaningless.

The family dog later returns to the house, and when the house recognizes his voice, the door opens and allows him to enter. The dog seeks the family who once lived here as he runs around upstairs, yelping at each door. Defeated upon finding no one inside, the dog returns downstairs and dies. The dog symbolizes both loyalty and a brokenness that exists between the capabilities of technology in the absence of people. The house has the ability to help the dog, yet instead of providing the nourishment which the dog desperately needs, the house prepares food and then disposes of it. Humans mediated the connections between the technology that could alleviate the burdens of life, and in their absence, their loyal pet cannot navigate the world which they have created. His loyalty is not valued by the technology of the house, demonstrating the ultimately cold and impersonal world humans have created.

Does "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury contain symbolism?

The symbolism present in Bradbury's story points to mankind's proclivities for waste, pollution, and destruction, contrasted with the purity and regenerating forces of the natural world.

Even after the family has been obliterated in the nuclear blast, the house continues to consume and waste: it prepares meals that no one eats, cleans the dishes, and flushes the uneaten food "away to the distant sea." The house wastes water on the lawn, as the "sprinklers whirled up in golden founts."  Beyond the house, "the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles." 

Nature, however, goes about its everyday business: the sun continues to rise and set, the sun shines, and the soft rains come.  Fire, one of Nature's most elemental forces, ultimately consumes the house that is symbolic of man's ostensible superiority, but at the story's end, "dawn showed faintly in the east."

Bradbury symbolically suggests that Nature has the capacity to outlive humanity's ruinous ways.

Does "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury contain symbolism?

In "There Will Come Soft Rains" Ray Bradbury portrays symbolism through the house, the mice, and the poem. All of these objects reflect mankinds use of technology. We are steering away from human interaction and our routines are becoming monotonous, mundane, technology-driven activities.

The house symbolizes mankind. We are constantly busy. Everyday we check off things on our "to do" lists and make more, longer lists. Our routines are almost robot like. The robots in the story seem to be racing around like our minds at times.

"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 religion continued senselessly, uselessly." This section is symbolizing religion and seems to say people use religion in a senseless and useless way. Shortly after this quote the dog died. It implied that if you lose religion bad things will happen.

The poem at the end about soft rains explains that life will go on even if we die. Nature and materialistic things (our cell phone and computer) won't care if we are gone. Things will still keep functioning. We need to build human relationships with other people, because they are the ones care about us. We are truly becoming a technology driven world and this story symbolizes this through the house, the mice, and the poem.

What is an example of a metaphor in the story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The house is compared to an altar, and the house itself is a metaphor for the dangers of over-relying on technology.

A metaphor is a common type of figurative language where something is referred to as something it is not.  Unlike a simile, a metaphor does not compare something to something else by saying it is like something else.  Metaphors say that something is something else.

This story describes a house that is the last house standing after a seriously devastating event, such as a nuclear holocaust.  The house is fully automated, and continues operating as if there were people inside it long after the people are dead.  Eventually, the house is destroyed in a fire it is unable to put out.

There are many similes in the story, but metaphor is also used to describe the house.

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 religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

This is a specific metaphor.  In this case, the house is compared to an altar.  An altar is a place of worship.  The metaphor compares that robots in the house to worshippers.  They are personified throughout, as if they were alive.  In this case, they are worshipping the house because it is their purpose.

The house itself is also a metaphor in a larger sense.  It is a metaphor for the destructive nature of technology.  Even though the family is dead, the house continues without them.  It was a more serious technology that destroyed all of the other houses and killed the people, but the idea is the same.  Too much technological advancement is dangerous.

At ten o'clock the house began to die. The wind blew. A failing tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

Just as the entire rest of the world was destroyed in a nuclear event, the house was destroyed in a fire.  Despite all of its technological advancement, the house could not save itself.  Bradbury is trying to warn us that we should not rely too much on technology.

What does the rain symbolize in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

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 its business, indifferent to what human beings want. The soft rains represent nature's quiet power and persistence, both of which will win out against human bluster in devising ever bigger and more destructive technology.

In the story, human civilization has destroyed itself through a nuclear war. A last, technologically sophisticated house has been left standing. It goes mindlessly through its activities, even though they have no purpose any longer, as the family the house once served is now dead.

As the story shows, nature is indifferent to the lack of humans. It is raining when the story opens, a rain that falls whether this is beneficial to humans or not. At the end of the story, when high winds and falling tree branches cause the house to catch on fire, the house could use a rainstorm to put the fire out, but no rain is forthcoming in time. The bits of water in the house's sprinkler system are inadequate to stopping the flames.

Bradbury shows nature doing what it wants, illustrating that despite human pretensions, nature is more powerful than humankind. We cannot expect it to conform to us.

What does the rain symbolize in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

An important symbol in Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” is the dog that enters the house. The dog is described as once being “huge and fleshy,” but now after the nuclear disaster it is “gone to bone and covered with sores.” The dog excitedly runs upstairs and searches for its owners. This action symbolizes the strong emotional bonds humans have with domesticated animals and, in particular, the sense of loyalty dogs have for humans and vice versa.

The dog is clearly hungry, and the house clearly has the ability to feed it. But the house cleans up all the food it makes because it is programmed to follow a strict routine that it cannot break. This symbolizes that while technology can be useful, it can never completely replace human action because it is void of emotion and compassion. Yes, the house can let the dog in by recognizing its voice, but it cannot express real loyalty or love to the animal.

The dog soon starts frothing at the mouth and running in wild circles until it collapses and dies. It is implied that the dog died from radiation poisoning. The house soon disposes of the body, which further emphasizes technology’s lack of respect and emotion. As the one living character in the story, the dog’s behavior sharply contrasts the automated behavior of everything else in the house. The contrast draws attention to how different technology is from humanity, even if it can perform the same functions.

What is an example of a simile in the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

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 contrast ironically with the horrors wrought by technology. As if they are natural, the robot mice who clean the empty house, "like mysterious invaders" pop back into their "burrows" when they are done, as if they don't want to intrude on human space. There's an irony in the invaders simile, because there's nothing left to invade now that everyone has been killed. These same mice are again described in natural terms as they go about their scheduled tasks with no reason left to do so, as soft and quiet "as blown gray leaves." The card tables fold "like great butterflies" at the appointed time, though nobody has played cards. The dinner dishes are "manipulated like magic tricks" by the mechanized house.  

As the house burns at the end, mirrors snap "like the brittle winter ice." As the fire intensifies, the mechanical voices of the house are likened to "a tragic nursery rhyme" and "children dying in a forest," although there is no longer anything human left. We end on a note of sadness. With just one wall left, the house repeats the date mindlessly, no one there to care. 

What is an example of a simile in the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

There are many examples of figurative language in “There Will Come Soft Rains.”  The story is post-apocalyptic, and there is no one in the house.  In order to show the reader the devastation that has occurred in the house, the writer uses figurative language such as similes to indicate no one is alive.  For example, he says: “At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone.”  The toast is compared to stone, letting us know that no one has touched it and it has hardened.

Some of the similes used are happy images in direct contrast with the idea the reader has that something is very wrong.  For example:  “and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass.”  The rain here is being compared to the sound of an animal’s hoofs, and it occurs in the nursery, where there are many happy images, but no sign of life.

Another simile occurs when the author is describing the furnace: “of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.”  This is a particularly strong example because it alludes to Baal, who is an evil king in hell.  This contributes to the suspense of the story by giving the reader an uneasy feeling.

What is the tone of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Unless it is qualified in some way, as in someone, perhaps, describing a narrator's tone, tone is generally understood to refer to the author's feelings about the story's subject. This story, to my mind, has a tone of inevitability. There seems to be no irony, no real surprise that any of the events that take place in the story—or that preceded it—have happened. It seems, in some ways, as though it were bound to. Whatever has been happening in the town near the home has "ruined" it, and now it produces a "radioactive glow" that can be seen from miles away. People have, evidently, become so reliant on technology to perform even the most mundane tasks—like cooking breakfast—that it must have progressed and advanced at a most rapid pace.

When progress occurs so quickly, we often do not have the opportunity to really think through and consider the myriad possibilities or consequences of its centrality in our lives (e.g., think about our current reliance on cell phones—do we know all possible consequences of this reliance? Surely not.). We cannot account for every natural possibility, just as the technologically advanced home can do nothing about an errant tree limb crashing through a window. Bradbury seems to adopt this tone of inevitability in order to convey the idea that nature can always, perhaps even will always, best us, no matter how prepared we think we are.

What is the tone of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The tone of a story is the mood it conveys. This story by Ray Bradbury evokes a mood of sadness and anxiety. We are made anxious because the domestic routines of the house go on with the evident—and at first mysterious—absence of the home's family. We are saddened as we realize that this is because the family has been killed in a nuclear attack.

Bradbury uses imagery—description using the five senses—to convey a tone or mood of anxiety and futility. For example, we are made anxious by the absence of the family in the following images of inedible and wasted eggs and toast:

At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. An aluminium wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea.

We are later made anxious by the house catching on fire with no human intelligence to intervene:

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. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone.

We are made sad and anxious by such images as the emaciated dog and the imprint of the family on the wall of the house.

All in all, the story is an effective critique of allowing technology to go out of control.

What is the tone of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

I think that the tone of this short story shifts during the story.  In the beginning of the story, the tone is one of loneliness.  The house in the story is smart, but Bradbury has given the house an emotional base as well.  The house knows that something is wrong, and it is worried about the absence of the people.  The house feels lonely, and that tone is carried out in how the house keeps asking its questions despite never being answered.  That tone moves from loneliness to fear as the house realizes that it is alone. 

Until this day, how well the house had 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.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

Near the end of the story, the tone shifts to a frantic tone.  The house is still afraid, but the fire causes the house to frantically try and preserve itself.  The house throws everything it can think of at the fire.  

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistoled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

The house becomes desperate in its attempts to save itself until the house itself is on its deathbed. The closing paragraph is a melancholic and sorrowful paragraph.  The house fought hard, but in the end it still failed.  I think the tone of the final paragraph shows a tone of futility too.  

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…"

What is the significance of the title "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Ray Bradbury has taken the title of this story from a poem called "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale. In her poem, Teasdale creates a peaceful and idyllic world in birds and frogs live happily. The point of this is to draw our attention to the fact that nature will survive long after humans have wiped themselves out by fighting constant wars. This is best summarised in the following lines:

"Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly."

In his story, Bradbury has brought the world of this poem to life: mankind has been wiped out after a nuclear blast but instead of depicting the survival of nature, it is Bradbury's mechanical house which remains. Rather ironically, the house is just as oblivious to the nuclear war that has happened as Sara Teasdale's birds and frogs.

So, by giving his story this title, Bradbury alludes to the importance of Sara Teasdale's message while also making his own key points about the potential dangers of technology.

Please see the reference links provided for more information.

Is there foreshadowing in "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury?

Since the story is so short, there isn't much time to slip a whole lot of foreshadowing in, but, Bradbury does manage it.  Take a look at the first line.  Right in the first line of the story, it mentions that there is a clock that speaks out the time to the house and family, and tells them that it is time to get up.  Then, here is the foreshadowing; the clock speaks "as if it were afraid that nobody would."  Right there that is foreshadowing.  The clock, an inanimate object, is given a fear that no one would get up when it asks.  That foreshadows that indeed, no one will respond to its call, which alludes to something terrible having happened.

Breakfast is then not eaten--this could reference an empty house.  Then, when the clock chimes in again, stating that it is time to go to school, once again, here is the foreshadowing:

"But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels."

Once again, there is a reference to an absolutely empty house, a house in which no one is going about their business, going to work and school.  From here on out, signs of emptiness increase--no car leaves the garage, the uneaten food is thrown away.  Then at ten o' clock, what has happened becomes much more clear--the story describes the house being the lone survivor in a ruined city.  At this point, we begin to understand what might have happened, and then right after that, we get the description of the images on the side of the house, images of the family that used to live there, that now does not because they were decimated.

So, the foreshadowing comes very quickly in the story, and in small ways until the full devastation is revealed; I hope that helps!  Good luck!

What is the metaphor in the story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The author describes the house and its technological functions in terms of being "alive." This is an example of personification. However, given that metaphor is a figure of speech that is used to describe one thing as if it is the same as another unrelated thing, we can say that the house (and/or the advanced technology that it makes use of) is a metaphor for living beings. The irony then is that, of course, the house and its machines are not alive. Bradbury uses this irony to show a stark future when humans have allowed technology to take over their lives. While technology can offer convenience and comfort to human lives, it can become so active (and humans so passive) that it becomes more alive while humans, continuing to do less and less for themselves, become more dead, so to speak. (Conversely, had humans been in they story, they may have been described as metaphors for machines.) 

In the story, humans have used another type of technology (atomic weapons) to destroy themselves, making them literally dead. And this leaves only the scarred remains of the house and other seemingly "alive" machines. This is an interesting use of metaphor and personification wherein the house (a non-living thing) is described as living but only to show how it is, in fact, not living. In this sense, it is a kind of metafiction: a metaphor that calls attention to the fact that it is not true. As the house is dying, it is dramatic but also unbelievable in the ways that the voices call out to the humans to escape; thus revealing that the house is unaware that the humans are gone. The house is unconscious, just a machine: 

And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died. 

How does the author use imagery in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Bradbury uses imagery in describing the dead humans as spots of paint.

Imagery is descriptive language that literally paints a picture in the reader’s mind.  This mental picture is created with sensory details and figurative language, and this chilling comparison encompasses both.

The story tells of a house that carries on after its inhabitants are dead.  The house is fully automated, and it does not realize that the people are all dead.  The reader does not realize it either, until Bradbury slams us with a most vivid image.

The house has been burned black, and only a few spots of its original white paint remain.

Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here … a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over … a small boy, hands flung into the air … and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The family was caught and captured in this “titanic instant” when the bomb blast hit.  Their images were burnt into our minds, because they shielded the house and created perfect silhouettes of their last moments alive.  They will forever remain a father mowing the lawn, a mother picking flowers, and a brother and sister playing catch.

Authors use imagery to help the reader get the point.  Here, the point about the danger of relying on technology is clearly made.  We create things to make our live easier, but we can only hope to avoid being the victims of our creations.

For more, see: http://www.enotes.com/topics/literary-terms/in-depth Scroll down to imagery.

What message do you think Bradbury is trying to convey in the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

I think the full message of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is not fully appreciated without reading it in its context within The Martian Chronicles, but it does make several salient points in a stand-alone format.

In the broader context of TMC, humanity has been making difficult but progressively more successful expeditions to colonize Mars, discussing its own fate and the fate of the Martians in the process, but failing to account for the corrupting effects of the same society that made the colonizing technology possible in the first place. Where the Martian expeditions are in some ways, an exploration of a frontier and the very limits of human achievement and philosophy, "back home" things are the same as they ever were, and a nuclear war is foreshadowed repeatedly. 

"There Were Come Soft Rains" depicts the aftermath of this inevitable war; the entire edifice of human civilization collapses in a matter of days or months. Many of the Martian colonists return to Earth out of emotional sympathy, only to presumably die with the rest. By the end of the anthology, there seem to be very few humans left alive on either planet.

The message of "There Will Come Soft Rains", either by itself or fitting into this overall narrative, is that humanity was so concerned with its own importance, its conveniences, and its comforts, that its own demise came as a surprise, but that nature doesn't really care, and our sense of importance was relevant only to ourselves. Gradually, nature begins to reclaim the Earth from us and our ruins, and our existence sudden seems to be very superficial.

In Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," how do we analyze his use of imagery?

What you have identified is the importance of setting and the imagery that is used to describe it in this important dystopian story that is almost unique for having no actual characters whatsoever. I will have a look at the first opening paragraph to analyse the imagery and see how Bradbury uses setting to convey his message.

The story starts unforgettably by presenting us with a future world which is supremely technologically advanced:

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. The mornign house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

Clearly the extent to which technology has advanced is incredibly impressive - literally there are robots to do everything for you! However, as you read the rest of the story you begin to realise what Bradbury is trying to aim at. With no human characters, this story is an ironic reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. It is also a warning about the limits and dangers of technology. The same technical wizardry that enables people of the future to create a fully automated house is also responsible for the creation of the nuclear weapons that destroy the human race. What use is all our cleverness and ingenuity at having created a machine to make our breakfast for us, Bradbury seems to ask, without the wisdom to accept our own vulnerable position in the universe?

What does the title "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" mean?

The title is a reference to a poem, and to the catastrophe that killed all of the people. 

The title tells us right away that the story takes place in the future.  You have to remember that it was published in 1950, so 2026 seemed a lot farther away than it does now.  Now it is a few years away, which is scary in itself!  However, the technology in this story is more advanced than what we have.  The house is very self-sufficient, and everything is automated.  It takes care of the people, doing everything from making them breakfast to reminding them of their bills. 

Unfortunately, there was a recent catastrophic event that did not destroy the house, but killed off its people (and eventually the family dog). 

The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down. 

The “titanic instant” that incinerated the people was likely some kind of nuclear blast. That could be the soft rain of the title, because atomic activity often causes acid rain.  The soft rain is kind of ironic.  It actually would be very dangerous rain. 

In the poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” that is recited in the story by the house, there is a reference to “soft rains” and war.  According to the poem, the animals and nature will barely notice when we are gone.  Humans will destroy themselves with war, and then the world will go on without us. 

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The catastrophic event in the story was likely caused by a war. We don’t know, but atomic bombs don’t just go off.  The poem’s inclusion seems to allude to war.  The people were going about their business, and then one day they were gone.  The house went on without them, not knowing they were gone. 

What does Bradbury's description of the fire suggest in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury tells the tragic story of an automated house that continues to operate as if all is well despite the fact that the owners, and presumably all humans in the area, have been killed. This passage implies that the deaths were probably caused by something instantaneous such as a nuclear holocaust:

The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing the lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

These are obviously the former occupants of the house, destroyed in a catastrophic instant. In their absence, the house continues to function until the random occurrence of a falling tree branch starts a fire. The fire is in fact a chance event, but in his description of it, Bradbury suggests that it is the enemy of the house that has come to attack and destroy it. He does this through personification, or the attribution of human characteristics to things that are not human. For instance, the fire "fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies." It "lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the color of drapes!" When robots try to put it out, "The fire backed off." "But the fire was clever" and its flames rush to the outside of the house.

If you read carefully, you can find numerous other examples of Bradbury's personification of the fire. He also personifies the house as a helpless victim of this relentless enemy in passages such as this:

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.

So Bradbury suggests an unforgettable image of the fire as a deadly ravenous monster come to devour and destroy the house, and the house as its innocent victim.

What is the message of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Ray Bradbury was often accused of being a Luddite, that is to say, someone with a knee-jerk hatred of new technology. Ample evidence in support of this argument would appear to be provided by his short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which deals with the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

It's notable in this regard that none of the technology dealt with in the story is something to which we can easily relate. Without anyone to cater for, the automated house is cold and soulless. And of course, the nuclear weapons that brought about the destruction of humankind instinctively make us shudder.

Even so, one could argue that the charge of Luddite against Bradbury is unfair. In “There Will Come Soft Rains,” as elsewhere in his science fiction, he's not railing against technology per se but rather how it is used. The story presents technology as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can make our lives easier. On the other, it can end our lives altogether. It all depends on how technology is used and what its original purpose is.

The ironic nature of technology is nicely illustrated by the fact that the automated house which, among other things, was designed to protect its human inhabitants from the dangers of nature was ultimately unable to protect humans from themselves. This was because the real danger lay not in the animal predators lurking outside but within the deepest, darkest recesses of the human heart, with its endless capacity to think up new ways to destroy the world.

What is the meaning behind "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

To some extent, the answer to this question will vary slightly depending on if the question is asking about the poem by Sara Teasdale or the short story written by Ray Bradbury. Conveniently, the short story includes Teasdale's poem because the story does a wonderful job of further expanding the imagery set forth in the poem.

The poem has a strong emphasis on nature not caring whether mankind is around. Nature will simply keep being what it is and doing what it does:

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The short story gives readers the same kind vibe and message, but there is a slight twist. The twist is that the house in the story goes about its business in the exact same way that it always has done its business. It makes breakfast for people that aren't there and reads to people that aren't able to listen. It doesn't know that the people are gone, an idea which echoes throughout Teasdale's poem. Whether it's nature or our inventions, neither will notice our absence. I would like to point out that Bradbury's story ends with the house being consumed by natural forces. As with Teasdale's poem, nature ends up "winning" in the battle for existence.

What is the meaning behind "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a poem by Sara Teasdale first published in 1920, in the immediate aftermath of the first world war. The poem expresses an apocalyptic vision of war and the possibility that the human race will annihilate itself in a tsunami of global conflict. In the wake of the development of the atom bomb, the poem was regarded as prescient, foreshadowing the possibility that humanity would develop the means to completely annihilate itself.

In Teasdale's vision, the destructiveness of humanity is contrasted with the beauty of the nature that would reclaim the world after the disappearance of humanity. The "soft rains" of the title would wash away the detritus of war and human activity and what would remain would be "swallows circling with their shimmering sound," frogs singing at night, wild plum trees with white flowers, and robins heralding a new spring. Teasdale portrays the indifference of nature to the loss of humanity in the final couplet:

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

What does the imagery in Bradbury's "There will Come Soft Rains" suggest about the foreshadowing?

The simplest way that the images foreshadow the reality in Bradbury's wonderful story is that they imply the situation before it is fully brought home. When Bradbury writes of the "dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores," he communicates just how badly things have gone for all the world before the picture is fully complete. After that, all the images of destruction imply that more will come. Though the house is standing at the start of the story, it stands almost alone, and so there's little surprise that things break down by story's end. Third, it shows that there is a kind of beauty in destruction.

What is the symbolic meaning of the setting in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The symbolic setting is any city that you would like it to be in.   The only other key piece of the setting is that it is after a nuclear bomb has been detonated.  I generally assume that the story is after a nuclear war.  That would make the neighborhood and home being described as one of many across the country or world.  

When the story was written, Bradbury's descriptions had to have seemed far into the future.  Nuclear war was a threat yes, but homes with robot vacuums and a voice that talks to you were definitely the things of science fiction.  Today though, Bradbury's story is eerily familiar.  In my own home, I have two robot vacuums.  An I-robot Roomba for carpets and a different one designed to mop hard floors.  My home doesn't talk to me, but Google will respond to my voice commands.  Siri and Cortana both can give auditory responses to commands.  Amazon has the Echo speaker.  It (she) has a voice, and her name is Alexa.  It's possible to tell her to pick a song based on your mood.  There's all kind of things in Bradbury's story that have come true, and that's scary to me.  It's scary because it seems like the only thing that hasn't come true yet is the nuclear war.  Let's hope that stays that way. 

What is an explanation of the imagery used in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

There are a number of places that Bradbury uses images to get across a certain image but one of the most powerful is the description of the shadows burned permanently onto the western wall of the house.

Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick up flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him, a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

Bradbury takes the time to craft this image very carefully, depicting not a man panicking or running in fear from the terrible news of a nuclear onslaught but a man mowing the lawn, doing something ordinary and something that many people could identify with.  The horror of this nuclear destruction is in its suddenness, in the fact that without warning the entire city could be wiped away with nothing left but these shadows and this one, lone house.

The same goes for the images of the woman and the children.  They are all engaged in normal, innocent, completely run of the mill activities that were recorded by the horrible flash of light that burned their shadows into the wall forever.

What imagery of destruction does Ray Bradbury use in the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is Ray Bradbury's depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear attack and an automated house which survives despite the deaths of the humans who live there. Bradbury structures the first two-thirds of the story by the house's announcements of time. By eight-thirty the reader realizes that something is amiss as the prepared breakfast is not eaten and is "flushed" away. At ten o'clock we discover that the house is the only one left standing in the city. The description of the "city of rubble" is the first use of imagery evoking destruction, but is not the last.

Images of people who have been killed are blasted on the charcoaled outside wall, and the dog, who has survived the initial blast, succumbs to radioactivity as "its eyes turned to fire." In the last third of the story destruction reigns as the house catches on fire when a tree crashes through a window, spilling a flammable liquid on the hot stove.

Despite all its best efforts to avert calamity, the robotic house cannot quell the spreading conflagration. Windows break, flames race from room to room, the blaze destroys furnishings and, as the attic crashes into the kitchen, the house dies. Bradbury describes it like a "bared skeleton" as wires and the inner workings of the house are revealed by the intense heat. The house is finally portrayed as "heaped rubble and steam." 

What is the meaning of the title "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

This story is set in the future (it was published in 1950). It is the year 2026 and technology has advanced in two significant ways. First, there is substantial technology to fully automate a house. The house in the story serves as alarm clock, cook, calendar, virtual secretary, gardener, maid, etc. There is also the technology to have weapons of mass destruction (atomic weapons). The family that used to live in this house has been vaporized, along with all the families in the general area and perhaps beyond. However, much of the house has survived the atomic blast and the house continues to function as if the family were still alive and well. 

The house schedules everything. Evidently, the house was programmed to recite a poem every night. When the house asks Mrs. McClellan which poem she would like to hear, no one is there to respond. The house selects a poem at random and the selection is "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale. The poem suggests that if mankind "perished utterly," nature and the remaining creatures would scarcely care or notice that mankind was gone. The phrase is "there will come" and this suggests that sometime in the future, "there will" come a time when humans will annihilate themselves. Or, at least, the suggestion is that there will come a time when humanity will be capable of this. It is a cautionary poem in a cautionary story. This could happen and when it does, the rains will come and nature will be oblivious to the fact that humans are gone. It is a lesson for humans to have some humility and to take serious responsibility for the technology they create. 

What is the title telling us in the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The title of Ray Bradbury’s story refers to the natural environment, which would continue to exist even if all members of the human species were to perish. The author shows how a house and the area around it may function without humans being present. Bradbury took the title from a 1918 poem by Sara Teasdale, which he includes in the story. She addressed the continuity of nature that would follow World War I. The devastation that Bradbury describes is suggestive of the aftermath of a nuclear war.

The use of “rains” to stand for all environmental phenomena is the literary device of synecdoche, in which a part stands for the whole. Bradbury’s story is primarily about an empty house that continues to function even though there are no humans living in it. The house contains numerous technological devices which would have been understood as futuristic when the story was written. Many of these machines are malfunctioning because no one is available to program them, or their output is wasted because no one is consuming it. The only traces of people are silhouettes of the home’s former residents, appearing as white paint burnt into a blackened exterior wall. When a fire starts, the house cannot save itself.

Teasdale’s poem specifically mentions war, and includes these lines:

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly.

If all humans were gone, no one would be available to remember those who had died. In Bradbury’s narrative, nuclear war is suggested by the “radioactive glow” emitted by “the ruined city” around the house. His story, like her poem, cautions humans to be careful and to try not to cause our own extinction.

What is the theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

One of the themes of the story is the fundamentally inhuman nature of technology. The automated house was originally built to cater for the family's every need. Yet in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse it still goes on, performing its functions despite the complete absence of any humans. On this reading, technology has a life of its own; though created by humans, it is able to operate without them.

This presents us with the scary picture, familiar from countless sci-fi stories and films, of technology as a kind of Frankenstein's monster, that eventually ends up dominating and controlling human life. Such power, as displayed by the automated house, was doubtless much in evidence before the nuclear explosion, but it is even more so now that humanity has been wiped out.