What is the universal theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury?

There is one major theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" which is not only universal but becomes more relevant with every passing year. The theme might be expressed as "the fragility of human life" or to use the title of Alan Weisman's 2007 nonfiction bestseller: The World Without Us.

This theme is evident from the very first sentence:

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.

If the clock really were afraid that nobody would get up, the clock would be right, since there is nobody in the house to get up. The clock is not afraid because it is a clock, but we immediately understand what the author means because anthropomorphism comes naturally to us. We are constantly attributing human emotions to inanimate objects and animals because we believe, with Protagoras, that "man is the measure of all things."

The effectiveness of Bradbury's story lies in its acknowledgement of and rebuke to human egocentricity. We see ourselves at the center of the world, with everything revolving around us. It is therefore eerie to read about a world in which everything does revolve around human beings, but the humans are no longer there. This world even contains poetry, which we consider one of the most uniquely human forms of expression, though there is no one to hear it. The story expresses a truth that human beings constantly forget: the end of humanity is not the same as the end of the world.

What is the universal theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury?

A universal theme is one that can be applied across cultures or historical time periods.

The universal theme or message of this short story is that nature does not need human beings to survive and will function regardless of whether we are here or not. Therefore, we should control our technology so that it doesn't destroy us. Nature is not going to step in and save us from ourselves. Nature is indifferent to us.

We see this play out in the story through the destruction of the house. First, the human beings in the vicinity of the house destroy themselves in a nuclear holocaust that wipes out the family that lived in the home. The house continues to function pointlessly without the family that gave meaning to its actions. Finally, nature wins out over the high tech house as described below:

The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

The house tries to save itself, but cannot. It burns up, save for one wall.

The theme of nature's indifference is reinforced by the quotes from a Sara Teasdale poem, also called "There Will come Soft Rains," that appears in the story:

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.

We need to behave sensibly and take care of ourselves or we will perish. This theme cuts across all cultures: many cultures have died out completely because they have not aligned their technologies with nature, as Diamond outlines in his book Collapse, and nature has gone on, indifferent to this fact.

What is the universal theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury?

I believe that a main theme is a theme about mankind and the natural world. There is a relationship there. Mankind exists within the natural world; however, Bradbury's story hearkens back to Naturalist writers like Stephen Crane. A big part of Naturalism was that nature was completely unconcerned about the plight and struggles of mankind. This story rings true of that attitude, and it drives the point home with the appearance of the Sara Teasdale poem that announces that Spring herself would scarcely notice if mankind ceased to exist. "There Will Come Soft Rains" has a city completely wiped out of human existence, and nature carries on with business as usual. Rains continue to happen. Fire continues to cleanse. The house might be struggling to stay together, but nature keeps on progressing with or without humanity.

Another related theme focuses on mankind's desire to be in control. That control might attempt to be exerted over nature. That's why we build houses in the first place. We are trying to protect ourselves from the elements; however, the house in the story takes it to a new level. The house has been programmed to anticipate every possible need of the human controllers. The house is a servant to the people within it and is subject to the human controllers. What is an important lesson is that humanity's desire to be in control didn't stop the eventual annihilation. Total control over an environment is simply not possible.

What is the universal theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury?

The universal theme of Ray Bradbury's story is the double-edged sword of technology: while technology can provide convenience and make important contributions to society, it also can be detrimental and senseless when mismanaged by man, or when it goes awry because of natural forces. In the setting of 2026, technology has added many conveniences to the house, but without the human factor, the house's routine becomes absurd. After the human occupants are removed, the mindlessness of machines, especially the automated kitchen and cleaning mice, becomes apparent.

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.

Without the reasonable human factor, any technology can go awry. It is only useful when it is kept under control through human consumption and activity, and man supervises this technology with reason. Apparently, however, war has been waged as a nuclear blast has made "five spots of paint" onto the side of the house that once were the former residents. Further, the natural force of fire overpowers the house and consumes it despite the efforts of the mechanical mice and other automated forces that fight to prevent the conflagration.

Clearly, then, two themes emerge from Bradbury's narrative:

1. Technology must be tempered with the reason and controls of the human factor; only then can it be practical and utile.

2. Man cannot always control his own destructive tendencies, nor can humankind and technology ever control natural forces.

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," which characterization techniques does Ray Bradbury use to enhance the theme?

In Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," the only remaining characters are robotic and mechanical. Since the story is set immediately after a nuclear bomb explosion, any characters that were real people are nothing more than silhouettes in the paint of the house created by a thin layer of charcoal. The silhouettes are of a "man mowing a lawn," a woman picking flowers, and two children playing a game of ball (p. 2-3). However, regardless of the fact that the remaining characters, except for the dog who soon dies, are mechanical robots, Bradbury manages to infuse the characters with many thoughts and emotions, and he does so using primarily direct characterization.

When a writer uses direct characterization, as opposed to indirect characterization, the writer uses "direct statements" to describe what the character is like through personality, thoughts and feelings. In contrast, through using indirect characterization, the reader gets a sense of what the character is like through the "character's thoughts, words, and actions" (Ervin II, "Direct vs. Indirect Characterization").

We see many examples of direct characterization throughout Bradbury's short story. One example is seen in the very first sentence of the story in which the mechanical voice-clock in the living room is announcing to the family, "Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up," but most importantly, Bradbury adds to the end of this sentence a description of the clock's feelings: "... as if it were afraid that nobody would [get up]" (p. 2). The addition of the clock's feelings helps to personify the clock as a real character and also helps to underscore the themes of death, emptiness, loneliness, and the destructive power of humankind present throughout the whole short story.

Other direct characterization can be seen with respect to descriptions of the actions of the stove, the dog, and especially the cleaning mice who are at one point described as being "angry" (p. 3).

What cultural events may have influenced Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Numerous social and cultural influences may have affected the composition of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Some of those influences may conceivably have been religious.  Such influences may have included the following:

• The diminishment of traditional religious faith in the “western” countries (such as Europe and the United States) following the rise of Darwinism in the late 19th century. As more and more educated people began to doubt the existence of God, religion exercised less and less influence over the conduct of intellectual, social, and political life. Some people might argue that neither of the two world wars would have taken place if people had genuinely practiced their Christian beliefs (although this is a highly questionable argument). Some people might argue, in particular, that the second world war was the result of the rise of powers that were either atheist (such as the Soviet Union) or that were rooted in a kind of bizarre, almost semi-religious faith of their own (such as Nazi Germany), or that were rooted in a kind of religion that easily lent itself to extreme nationalism (such as in Japan). In any case, many Americans worried, in the late 1940s, that atomic war between the Soviet Union and the United States was inevitable, and that “godless” communism might triumph in any such conflict. Others pointed out that that communists in a sense had gods of their own, such as Lenin and Stalin.
• The rise of materialism itself as a kind of religion. Arguably this is what happened, in some ways, in the Soviet Union, but one could also argue that it happened in the United States and other western countries as well.  Certainly this seems to be the idea suggested in the following passage from Bradbury’s story:

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.

In this passage, the narrator seems to suggest that humans have set themselves up as demi-gods, with technological conveniences designed to cater to their every need. In a sense, humans thereby worship themselves, but in another sense they worship the technology that they regard as crucial to their material comfort.  Their focus seems to be secular; they seem to be concerned more with the immediate pleasures of life on earth than with any “higher,” “spiritual” pleasures in this life or in the life hereafter.  One way to read Bradbury’s story is as a warning about the dangers of atomic warfare, but another way to read the story is as a warning about the dangers of materialism even if war never occurs.  Bradbury seems to be mocking a highly technological and materialistic society in which humans expect machines to function, in a sense, as their slaves or as their almost religious devotees. The story can be read as a critique of materialism even if such materialism never leads to actual atomic war.

What social developments may have influenced Ray Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Various developments in society clearly influenced the composition of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The story seems to have been written both to reflect and to predict important social changes.

One social development obviously relevant to Bradbury’s story is the rise of technological innovation in the first half of the twentieth century and especially in the 1940s. Partly the developments of the 1940s were spurred by World War II, which stimulated a great deal of technological innovation.  Even since 1900, however, Americans and people in other industrialized countries had seen their lives transformed thanks to such innovations as the automobile, the airplane, the radio, and other inventions. Each of these inventions was continuously improved, and there was good reason to think that such improvements would only get better and better as time went on. Therefore, it was hardly fanciful of Bradbury to imagine some of the technological developments featured in this story. At one point, for instance, the narrator describes the method by which the house is cleaned:

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

At the time when Bradbury was writing, vacuum cleaners were becoming increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated. Many of Bradbury’s original readers, however, must have longed for the day when such cleaners would work entirely on their own, without any human assistance. That day, however, must have seemed a long way off. Yet today, of course, we have vacuum cleaners (such as the “Roomba”) that operate very much as Bradbury imagined.  They cannot, admittedly, operate entirely without human assistance, but the assistance required is now minimal.

Another development taking place in the society of the late 1940s that is reflected in Bradbury’s story is the development of better fire prevention systems. The development of such systems had actually begun in the early 1800s, but by the 1940s they had become increasingly common in businesses and factories. It was just a matter of time (Bradbury assumed) until they would be regular fixtures in houses as well. Thus the narrator reports that when a blaze breaks out in the home he has been describing, a fire prevention system kicks into immediate operation:

"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent [which had caused the accidental fire in the first place] spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"

Systems of the sort described here are quite common today, especially in office buildings, commercial establishments, schools, and skyscrapers. Such systems have not yet become standard features of most homes, but smoke alarms are now routine and even, in some places, required.  Thus Bradbury describes a technological innovation that had become increasingly common in the society of his time and that seems likely to become even more common in the society of the future.

What might be a few universal truths expressed in Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Softy Rains"?

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” suggests a number of ideas that some readers may regard as so convincing that they could arguably be considered “universal truths.” Among such ideas are the following:

• That some technological innovations are likely to make life increasingly easy for human beings, allowing humans to avoid a great deal of monotonous and everyday work.
• That some other technological innovations (such as weapons, especially atomic weapons) have the ability to make life horrific for human beings and even have the ability to wipe out all (or almost all) life on the planet.
• That humans are unlikely to be able to control misuse of the second kind of technology.
• That nature will probably endure even if (and even after) humans are gone.  It is unlikely that human technology will ever destroy the planet entirely. For a long time to come, a planet called “earth” by humans is likely to continue to orbit the sun.
• That if humans ever do succeed in destroying themselves, they are likely to destroy many innocent creatures as well.  Thus, the dog in Bradbury’s story is almost certainly a victim of atomic poisoning:

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died.

• That technology, having been used in such a way as to destroy humanity, will finally have reached the end of its own evolution.

What autobiographical events may have affected the composition of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” first published in 1950, reflects various aspects of its author’s life of the late 1940s.

One way in which Bradbury’s story reflects Bradbury’s life in the late 1940s involves the story’s allusions to marriage and children. Bradbury married Marguerite McClure in late 1947, and their first child, Susan, was born in 1949. Thus, at precisely the time when Bradbury was creating a story describing the horrific destruction of a family, Bradbury himself was starting a family of his own. One of the most memorable passages of Bradbury’s story is the one that depicts the abrupt incineration of an entire family in an atomic holocaust:

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

It must have been easy for Bradbury, when he was writing these sentences, to imagine himself, his wife, and his young daughter being destroyed in a similar fashion. Fear of atomic warfare was widespread in the 1940s, and Bradbury would have been a very unusual person if the thought of dying in a nuclear war did not cross his own mind at this time. Indeed, the mere existence of this story is evidence that the prospect of such a war had been the subject of some of Bradbury’s thinking. Yet it was one thing to imagine one’s own death in such a war, and something far more horrible to imagine the death of one’s wife and child.

Another way in which Bradbury’s story seems relevant to his own life is that the story is set in California. Bradbury could easily have set the story in Europe, in Asia, or in some other part of the United States. Instead, he sets it in the very state in which he was living at the time. The story’s events take place “in the city of Allendale, California.” Such a city really existed at the time Bradbury wrote; it was located not far from San Francisco. In fact, at one point, Bradbury’s narrator reports that

At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum 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.

Bradbury thus sets his story in a California location close enough to the ocean that its garbage is disposed of in the Pacific. At the time when Bradbury was composing this story, he himself was living very near the California coast, within greater Los Angeles. Thus he sets the tale in the kind of California location with which he was himself quite personally familiar. The story thus reflects the social and political conditions of the time in which it was written, but it also reflects various aspects of its author’s own life.

What elements of the contemporary political situation may have inspired Ray Bradbury to write his story "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” reflects the era in which it was written in a number of different ways, including in its allusions to the contemporary political situation of the late 1940s. (The story was originally published in 1950.)

One way in which the story reflects the political situation of the late 1940s is in its allusions to nuclear warfare. Such warfare had been practiced by the United States against Japan in August 1945 in an effort to bring World War II to an end, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (two Japanese cities) were instrumental in convincing the Japanese government to surrender.  Bradbury’s story imagines a time in which the tables are turned and the United States itself suffers an atomic attack – a real possibility since, by the time his story was written, other nations had also acquired nuclear weapons. In the most explicit allusion to atomic attack in the story, the narrator notes that

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

Clearly these sentences describe the aftermath of an atomic attack. The people whose silhouettes are preserved on the side of the otherwise blackened house were obviously killed while in the midst of ordinary, everyday activities. They were destroyed in “one titanic instant,” and now all that is left of them are stark images of their very last moments in time. They had no time to prepare for their destruction, no warning that it was due, no chance to avoid it. It came in an instant, and they were gone.

Another aspect of the story that implies an atomic holocaust appears when the narrator describes the fate of the family dog.  The dog returns to the house after the atomic explosion has taken place, looking sickly and covered with mud. Later the narrator reports that

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.

The dog’s bizarre behavior implies that it is horrifically ill, probably from radiation sickness. Death from radiation poisoning was in some ways even worse than immediate death from an atomic blast itself. Those who died in the first split seconds after the blast had little time to suffer, but the dog’s death is an example of the excruciating pain that could be felt by those who were “lucky” enough to survive the initial blast.

Bradbury’s story paints of very bleak picture of the horrors that many people feared might very well result if the contemporary political situation of the late 1940s led to further atomic war. Obviously his story is designed as a warning, intended to help prevent the very horrors it so graphically describes.

How does Bradbury indicate the long-term circumstances in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

In "There Will Come Soft Rains," the author mentions in the first paragraph that the house is empty, and there are many details to emphasize that the automated house is performing all its elaborate functions for no one. The reader then learns that the house stands "alone in a city of rubble and ashes." This is suggestive since there is no mention of corpses or any human remains, as there probably would be if the cataclysm which destroyed the city were recent. Shortly afterwards, Bradbury describes the silhouettes of the family standing out against the charred west side of the house, but no sign of the family themselves, even their remains.

After this image, the author tells the reader, "Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace." This suggests the passage of some time. It would not be remarkable if the house had only functioned like this for a few days. Most significantly, there is the condition of the dog, which was once well cared-for, "huge and fleshy." It would not have reached its present condition, bony and covered in sores, in a short time. Finally, the dog and the house, both anthropomorphized, realize at the same point that the people will never return, and the silence is permanent.

What societal concerns and techniques does Bradbury explore in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

In this story, Bradbury is expressing concerns about the possibility of total destruction as a result of technological advancements. Remember that this story was published in 1950 against the backdrop of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. The use of nuclear weapons was not only a very real possibility, but had already been used to bring about the end of World War II. There was, therefore, a lot of concern about whether the Cold War would escalate in the same way.

To bring this concern to life, Bradbury uses personification. Instead of having human characters, the house is a living entity and, more importantly, it is not at all affected by the total destruction of the resident family. The house simply carries on, repeating its daily routines, as though nobody has died at all. Even when the family dog dies from radiation sickness, the only reaction of the house is to clean up the mess.

The absence of people and the cold, uncaring portrayal of the house is effective in inciting uncomfortable feelings in the reader because it is a reminder that if we continue on such a destructive path, nobody will mourn our loss.