There Will Come Soft Rains," which is also quoted by the house in the story. The poem highlights the central theme of the story: in a conflict between humankind and nature, nature will win. We are deceiving ourselves—we have an inflated sense of pride as a species—if we think that nature cares at all if we live or die. We have to adjust to the limits of the natural world, not vice versa.

This need to rein in technology is demonstrated, first, by the destruction of human society by a nuclear war that leaves the family the house serves dead. It is made clear a second time as the house goes through the motions of the day, trying to care for a family that no longer exists. When a fire finally breaks out in the house, no amount of technological sophistication can save it from destruction.

Bradbury's main concern when writing this story in 1951 was nuclear war: only six years before, the world was stunned to watch the power of atomic bombs to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, illustrating for the first time that our technology could go out of control and destroy all of us. This is still a threat, but more immediately, the story is relevant to climate change: if we are so proud as to think we can do whatever we want and nature will simply bend to our will, we are likely to have—or are having—a rude awakening.

It is a general rule of storytelling that there must be conflict. A story without conflict is merely a sequence of events, one thing after another, with no drama or interest. "There Will Come Soft Rains" initially appears to be just such a sequence. There are actions, but no reactions. Food is prepared, sits untouched, and disappears down "a metal throat."

Conflict comes at the end of the story, however, when the house tries to save itself from the fire. This is man against nature, replicated as technology against nature, since the technology exhibits the instinct for self-preservation which characterized those who made it. Bradbury describes the conflict between the house and the fire as an epic struggle, personifying both as he tells the reader that "the fire was clever" and "the house shuddered."

The house's fight for survival, however, is the final conflict, but not the central conflict. This has already happened when the story begins, but the reader is invited to examine the evidence like a detective, to piece together a much greater cataclysm than the burning of a single house. In this conflict, humanity attempted to wield technology as a weapon to subdue nature, just as humanity has always done. Man lost the battle with nature, and the minor skirmish that occurs at the end of the story is a faint echo of his loss.

The main conflict in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is between man and nature, or to be more specific, between the technology that man has created and nature. For generations, man has sought to control nature, to bend it to his indomitable will. Ever since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, man's whole relationship to nature has changed completely. Nature is no longer something to live with, but a standing resource to control and exploit to satisfy man's needs.

In helping him to exploit nature more efficiently, man has made a number of technological advances. Such advances have also been used to provide an alternative natural environment to the one used and often abused by humankind. One such example would be the fully-automated house in "There Will Come Soft Rains," which attempts to replicate certain features of the natural world. Mice, for example, are transformed into robotic mice.

At the same time, the automated house exists to protect its human inhabitants from certain harsh and unpleasant features of the natural world, such as "lonely foxes and whining cats." The house will even protect those inside from a humble sparrow brushing up against the window.

Yet in the end, it's nature that ultimately triumphs in this epic conflict. Thanks to nuclear Armageddon, all humanity has been wiped out, so there's no longer anyone for the automated house to protect. The house and the technology on which it is based may have done a good job in protecting its inhabitants from nature, but it was unable to protect humans from themselves, as it was humans and their nuclear weapons that ultimately destroyed humanity.

The central conflict of the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" concerns man versus nature, which is illustrated by the home's inability to protect itself from the destructive natural forces. The home is portrayed as a masterpiece of human ingenuity and technology. The home autonomously completes numerous tasks, which makes everyday life easy for its human inhabitants. It was designed to function flawlessly and provide a comfortable manufactured environment for the family. Unfortunately, the family that once lived in the home died during a nuclear holocaust, and all that remains is the autonomously functioning home. Despite the amazing capabilities of the home, it cannot compete with the natural environment. Once the large tree branch falls into the kitchen, the home catches on fire and is unable to prevent the flames from consuming it. The elements of nature are represented by the strong winds that knock down the tree branch into the home, which begins the series of events that destroy the technologically advanced home. The result of the conflict in the story represents how nature will outlast and overcome all human invention in the future.

The central conflict is that between man and nature. In this case the idea that man has invented incredible machinery that can govern almost every facet of life but still cannot control the forces of nature.  Though it is not explicit, it appears that mankind has been completely wiped out through some kind of nuclear holocaust and the house has continued to function as a servant to mankind.

But it too cannot escape the forces of nature, in this case the fire that destroys it.  So the power of man, manifest through these automated machines, is eventually completely wiped out by the inevitable forces of nature.

The central conflict in this story is that of nature versus human technology. As the Sara Teadsdale poem that the story's title alludes to suggests, when technology gets into a conflict with nature, nature wins.

In the story, a nuclear holocaust has seemingly wiped out civilization. A single house is left standing, though the family that lived it has been killed. The house is quite technologically advanced and mechanically goes about its duties of caring for the family even though there is no family left to care for. It makes meals, sets up card tables, cleans, and even recites a Sara Teasdale poem. However, when a tree crashes, starting a fire, it is nature that wins—the house burns up and all its smoke alarms and sprinklers can't save it.

The poem and the story warn us that our technology cannot overpower nature nor save us from our fate. We need to control our technology rather than let it control us. We need to align ourselves with nature or we may very well wipe ourselves out—and nature will go on, completely indifferent to our fate.

Bradbury cautions against over-reliance on technology, implying it will lead to our doom.

With regard to the central conflict in "There Will Come Soft Rains," Ray Bradbury has written an unusual story. The implied conflict is essentially mankind versus itself, and readers are presented with only the aftermath of this conflict.

Bradbury's cautionary tale observes that in the nuclear age, mankind has the capability of destroying itself en masse, and such destructive technology must not be handled simply and thoughtlessly as an extension of the technologies that make the responsibilities of everyday life easier.

Bradbury also observes the danger of not being discriminating in what we relegate to automation. While few might argue that mundane tasks such as cleaning are a meaningful expenditure of one's time, preparing children for bed and reading to them are, and to equate the two is morally questionable.

The author leaves readers to consider the irony of a scientific community developing an elaborate in-home fire suppression system while neglecting to offer a fail-safe for the all-consuming nuclear fire that destroys humanity.

There are no human characters in the story, and so in a literal sense there cannot be a "Man versus" conflict. However, humanity is seen in their achievements, shown here by an automated house that exists for the sole purpose of making life easier for humans. However, the humans are gone, so the house must simply work, moving along as it has been taught without any higher purpose. At the end of the story, the house tries in vain to fight a kitchen fire:

...there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.

But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.
(Bradbury, "There Will Come Soft Rains," nexuslearning.net)

This last-ditch effort to fight fire shows the human aversion to being burned and the lengths to which humanity will go to protect themselves from accidental fires. In a more symbolic sense, then, this shows Man versus Nature, as Man's creation (the house) fights against a natural accident (the branch which blows through a window and spills oven cleaner on the stove). Since there is no human brain to make decisions based on instinct instead of pre-programmed responses, the fire (nature) wins in the end, leaving Man (the house) destroyed and forgotten.

The short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” is a commentary by Ray Bradbury on the destructiveness of technology. The society in the story has let technology take over daily life because it is efficient and convenient. The house in the story does everything for its family, including cooking breakfast and reciting the family’s favorite poetry.  Unfortunately, the society in the short story has been destroyed by a nuclear war, leaving only one house in the city standing. The house slowly starts to self-destruct as a fire ravages it at the end of the story. 

Bradbury’s ultimate message in the story shows the irony of letting technology take over our lives. The technology that society loved so much for taking care of them is the very same technology that destroys them in a nuclear war. Thematically, Bradbury cautions his readers in this story as well as in other stories like Fahrenheit 451 and “The Veldt” that they need to beware of becoming too dependent on and obsessed with technology. 

The climax of the story occurs when the house catches on fire and the ubiquitous flames affect the death of the technology in the vacant house.

Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" depicts a future that reflects the possible outcome of modern day technology which has gone out of control. First, there has been a nuclear explosion: 

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...and opposite him, a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

A bedraggled dog whines at the door to the charred house. After the door automatically opens, it runs through the house in search of the family. Finally, as a result of the nuclear fallout, it froths at the mouth, runs in circles, and dies. Then, the automated house detects decay and "regimented mice" appear to discard the poor animal. Soon, the house goes about the regular routine, but there is no one alive to eat the meals or listen to the voices. In the evening, Sara Teasdale's poem is read, and, ironically, its message has proven to be prophetic:

....If mankind perished utterly;

...Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The poem foreshadows what next occurs. The powers of Nature conquer the technology of the house when a tree bough crashes through the kitchen window and the house catches on fire. The house "tried to save itself," but the water pump "shrugged to a stop" and the sprinklers no longer work to put out the raging fire. Finally, the fire runs outside the house through the attic. "An explosion!" Then, the fire runs one direction, and still another until the entire house is consumed. After all is destroyed, there is yet within the house "a last voice" that calls out the date, but no one exists to listen.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury whose title is taken from a poem of the same name by Sara Teasdale. The story tells of the nuclear destruction of Allendale, California and a single house which stands shortly after the debacle. The house is automated: It calls out the time of the day, prepares food for the inhabitants (now dead), and has robotic devices which clean the home. The climax of the story comes when the house, which has survived the nuclear blast, is accidentally set ablaze when a falling tree limb breaks through a window, knocking over a flammable solvent. The house tries to save itself, automatically shutting windows and setting off water sprinklers, but nature's fury proves too powerful for the human technology inside.

An example of suspense in the story is the following:

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels.

This passage comes after the description of the mechanical functioning of the house, and it's not clear what happened to the residents of the house or why it is empty. This passage interjects a note of suspense, as the reader wonders why after the chiming of the clock, there is no activity in the house and no one is leaving or stirring in the house. The reader wonders why the mechanical functioning of the house is continuing while the residents of the house are strangely absent. It is not until the middle of the next paragraph that the reader finds out that this house is the lone house standing after an atomic bomb blast that has bathed the city in a radioactive glow and that has caused the silhouettes of the residents to be burned into the side of the house. 

I wouldn't call this the most suspenseful story ever written in the annals of literature. But that's what makes this an interesting question: what, beyond lyrical language, keeps us reading?

We can see that Bradbury creates suspense in the first lines of the story:

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 morning house lay empty.

That opening is one example of suspense. Why, we wonder, would the clock fear that nobody would get up? Why is the house empty? Where are the occupants? These questions create unease and encourage us to read on.

At ten o'clock, we learn this is the only house left standing in a ruined landscape, the remnant of what we now suspect has been a nuclear holocaust. 

Our suspense builds as the morning passes, hour by hour, and the house remains deserted. When an upset dog comes in, foaming at the mouth and dies, we are even more curious. What will happen? Despite the house going through its normal routine, nothing is normal. 

Another moment of suspense occurs when the kitchen catches on fire and the fire alarms go off. Will the house, this high tech mechanism, be able to save itself?

Ray Bradbury creates suspense in two places in his short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains." The story is about an automated house that still functions in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It is the only house left in a city that has been leveled.

But before revealing that the attack has occurred, we feel suspense as the house goes through its daily routine of preparing breakfast, making important announcements and doing the cleaning. All of this takes place without a hint that any humans are around. The reader wonders why this house is still going through the motions when no human is occupying it. We don't learn about the attack until the house has performed several of its morning duties.

The reader may actually begin to look at the house as a living entity as it continues with its day. Because we have an emotional interest in the house we definitely feel suspense as the fire breaks out. We want the house to survive, just as we would a human protagonist. When we learn that "reinforcements" have been released to fight the fire we feel some relief. Unfortunately, the house cannot be saved and we experience grief over the loss of the last vestiges of intelligence and activity in the gutted city. 

The main conflict expressed in the story has to do with the fate of mankind.  While the world lays in ruins outside the house, with the outlines of the former occupants burned into its side, Bradbury makes a point of focusing on the death and destruction of people, while the house, still remains.

He is making a larger comment on the potential future that humanity faces, the advanced technology is both a great invention and a great menace.  Clearly, the same society that created the smart house that takes care of everything is also responsible for the destruction of all the humanity.

Even though the house is so efficient, it cannot help the starving dog survive, he becomes a victim of the same technology that has made the former occupants lives so easy.

This is an interesting question, as there really isn't a "character" to experience conflict in the story.  However, if I had to guess, I'd consider the conflict to be the house's inability to sustain itself without human oversight.  While things go on normally for a certain amount of time, such as the preparation and serving of meals, daily cleaning and maintenance, and even the reading of poetry in the evenings (hence the title of the short story), it is unable to stop the fire. 

Once the fire starts, the sprinklers and "robot mice" attempt to put it out, but without any outside assistance, the house can only hold out so long before it succumbs to the flames.  It's a difficult story to understand at some points, but at the same time, it shows that things not built by human hands (nature itself, wildlife, etc.) are able to survive just fine without our protection and intervention.  This is seen most notably in the poem by Sara Tisdale, included in the short story.

Suspense starts to build in this story as we wonder where the family is, and when they are going to appear, if at all.  The first infusion of suspense is after the breakfast food that is prepared so fastidiously by the machines is not eaten.  All of that food is thrown away, after sitting there for quite some time.  At this point, the reader has to wonder to oneself, where is the family?  Why didn't they eat the breakfast?  From then on, any noticable absence of the family members builds on that initial suspense; the garage opens but no car leaves.  Reminders are given, but echo down empty hallways.  All of this builds and builds until we are taken outside, and the imprints of people are described on the blackened wall of the house.  Then, we realize that the family, mid-play, was completely decimated, as was much of their city.

After we realize what happened to the family, the suspense lessens a bit; we already know that they died, now we are just hanging in there for the ride, to see how Bradbury is going to end the story.  Our suspense flares up again as the poor, sick dog comes in the house.  We rally around it, hoping it will survive, and are sorely disappointed and depressed when it doesn't.  Another flare of suspense occurs when the house freaks out and sets itself on fire--this is an interesting development, and we wonder if it will really burn itself down.

The suspense in "There Will Come Soft Rains" is mainly evident as the audience realizes that the family is not there, and that something is awfully wrong as a result of it.  The absence of human life in a world that is filled with technology is a strange and discomfiting one indeed, and that is why it is so suspenseful.  I hope that helped; good luck!

This is a rather unique story for a number of reasons, the first one being the complete absence of any form of human characters. The only "life" we are presented with is in the form of the robots that humans made before their extinction and then the few straggling examples of nature that remain, such as the dying dog. However, the title is explictly linked to the central conflict of the story, which is indicated through the allusion to the poem by Teasdale. We see nature and mankind set in conflict with each other, but the overwhelming message of the story is the way in which that nature is so much stronger and powerful than mankind, which it has already outlasted. Note the following quote from the poem:

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:

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarecely know that we were gone.

Ironically, the robot has chosen to read a poem that sums up precisely the scenario that we are presented with. Mankind has "perished utterly," but nature carries on regardless. In spite of our feelings of lofty grandeur, we are incredibly forgetable, and when we perish, nature will continue without even noticing our absence. We will have failed to leave a mark on the cosmos in the large scheme of things. In spite of the massive technological advances that man has been shown to make in this story, we still have not gained for ourselves immortality.

The title is reflective of Teasdale's poem of the same name.  The larger implications is the idea that the condition of nature is a powerful one.  Similar to the natural setting of the poem, where a "soft rain will fall" regardless of context and consequence, Bradbury's short story reveals that nature is too large of a force to stop.  Human beings cannot overcome the natural condition that has given birth to the world before them and will be present after them.  While science and technology has created impressive elements, such as the automated house, the cleaning mice, and the weapons capable of causing great damage, it cannot eliminate nature.  It cannot get rid of the natural setting that encompasses all existence and because of this regardless of what happens, "there will come soft rains."  In this assertion in both the title and theme, its relevance is evident.