in the story, absent of any human presence, suggest this family that lived in the Allendale, California house led a fulfilled life. They celebrated birthdays, played together, ate as a family, and even listened to poetry.

While all of this seemingly pleasant life is occurring in the narration, Bradbury reveals the terrible thing that had happened. At 10 o'clock, the house was the only one standing amid "rubble and ashes" and a "radioactive glow" could be seen for miles. Not only this, but the fate of the family is even more devastating:

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.

After this reveal, Bradbury returns to the activity of the house going on about its business. The house dealt cards, served dinner, and cleaned up. The nursery walls performed for no audience. But, in contrast to the pleasant opening of the story, the house now seems to be a haunting reminder of the meaninglessness of this type of activity. Other technology—particularly nuclear weapons—would make every object useless.

In a story without any human action and no traditional characters, Bradbury effectively relies on his story's structure to create an emotional response in readers.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury is a story set in Allendale, California, which has been destroyed by nuclear war. The story begins on August 4, 2026, and ends on August 5, 2026. It covers a single day and is told in chronological order.

The main character in the story is a house run by a computer that has been programmed to perform regular tasks, including issuing reminders and alerts to human occupants. The story is structured around the house announcing the time and then performing time-appropriate activities, such as making breakfast, helping its occupants get ready for work and school, gardening, cleaning, and entertaining children. Of course, the occupants are dead—except for the dog, who returns home only to die of radiation poisoning.

What makes this structure so effective is the way it contrasts the expectations of a perfect suburban family life with the eerily empty reality of an apocalyptic world. Every time the house prepares a meal and no one shows up to consume it, readers are struck by the poignancy of the situation, but in a way that avoids sentimentality through the mechanistic quality of the intelligent house protagonist.