the western facing wall. These five white spots are the silhouettes of the family that once lived there. The white spots are the outlines of each member of the family, and each person was engaged in an outdoor activity during the atomic blast.

The five spots on the outer wall are the images of a man mowing the lawn, two children playing catch, a ball suspended in midair, and a woman gardening. These images depict a family enjoying the outdoors on a typical summer day and indicate that the bomb was dropped without warning. The fact that the ball was suspended in midair emphasizes the abrupt, sudden effect of the blast, which was apparently faster than gravity. The family had no time to take cover, and their flesh must have disintegrated during the blast.

The five white spots are a haunting visual that contributes to the eerie, chilling atmosphere of the story. Although the family is deceased, the mechanical home continues to perform its daily functions, until a fallen tree branch sparks a destructive fire.

The spots of paint are all that is left of the people who lived in the house.

There are no people alive to tell the story in “There Will Come Soft Rains.”  There has been some kind of recent catastrophic event that seems to have caused an apocalypse.  It appears to have been some kind of atomic bomb, because it disintegrated the people.  Since the family was outside when it happened, they became nothing more than paint spots on the wall.

We are told that the “west face” of the house is almost completely black, except for the spaces where the people were standing in front of it.

Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther … 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 family was on the lawn, with the man moving and the woman picking flowers while the girl and boy played catch together.  The bomb went off and blackened the side of the house, leaving gaps where the people had been standing.  All of the people are dead, but somehow the dog survived—barely.

A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch. The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud.

The dog is the only living being still alive, but it is not really alive.  It has been poisoned by the bombing, and is clinging to life.  Since the house is automated it is still able to get in, but it dies there.  The dog lets us know that the apocalypse was recent.

This story is clearly a cautionary tale.  The house is practically alive with technology, but technology killed all of the people.  In trying to make life easier for themselves, the human beings destroyed themselves.  Sometimes technology can be a Pandora’s Box, unleashing destruction that was never expected.

The significance of the spots is that they represent where the members of the family died.

The image is significant because it describes the people who used to live in the house, memorialized permanently by the atomic bomb.  When the bomb exploded, the man was mowing the lawn, the woman was picking flowers, and the children were playing with a ball.  The bomb blast turned them each into a “silhouette in paint.”

The five spots of paint-the man, the woman, the children, the ball-remained. The rest was a thin charcoal layer.

Until this part of the story, all we know is that it is the year 2026 and the house seems to be automated, but the people it is supposed to take care of no longer exist.  When the dog arrives in such bad shape and dies, only to be incinerated like garbage by the mice.

The irony of the story is that technology is so advanced that it makes human life easier, because the house keeps itself clean and meets every whim of its inhabitants, but it also took away human life.  The atomic bomb is also technology, and it killed all of the humans.