Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains

In his intriguing story There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury portrays a dystopian future wherein all of humanity has been destroyed and all that remains is their creations, more specifically the technology they’ve created. By portraying this haunting image of a world decimated by simple human nature, Bradbury illustrates the idea that we, as a species, cannot resist our nature to expand beyond current limits and to explore unchartered territory, and in doing so, will have reached and will continue to reach places, literal and figurative, that we never should have visited or even had been willing to visit. The inevitable result is our demise.

In Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” the author reminds the reader how the technology advancement can be wondrous yet dangerous. He shows the world in the 2026, how it’s going to go on without the life of humans. As technology has been misused, it became the ultimate destruction of humans. People depended too much on technology and had faith to it.

What are the true motives behind the writing of the two short stories written by Ray Bradbury? Digging deeper into the mind of the author, interpreting the era in which he lived and wrote the story, we get a better understanding of the deeper meaning of these short stories. August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rain and A Sound of Thunder are used to portray Bradbury’s fear of the destruction of the human kind through self absorption and corruption. Simultaneously, Bradbury expresses the fact that nature will continue to thrive with or without humans.

Technology is a helpful tool that society has become accustomed to using. However, the overuse of technology can lead to disaster. In “The Veldt” and “There Will Come Soft Rains”, Ray Bradbury explores the power that technology holds through the use of futuristic gadgets. Both stories contain smart homes that provide everything for the humans living in the house and show the destruction caused by it. Through these technological advancements, the reader sees how mankind is being defeated by its own creation in mental and physical ways. Bradbury uses the superior technology of the smart home, the replacement of humans for the newest electronics, and the dependence of technology on humans to explain that overindulgence of these modern appliances can have drastic results.

Ray Bradbury has written several futuristic stories which portray the advancement of society. “There Will Come Soft Rains” contains technology in the house that we only dream about. Our current homes, compared to the house in Bradbury’s story, seem bland and helpless in comparison.

Ray Bradbury's short story “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” shares several recurring themes and points with Sara Teasdale’s poem, “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Bradbury’s story describes a lone house in the remains of a futuristic city, destroyed by a nuclear war. Teasdale’s poem states the theory that if humankind were to disintegrate, it would hardly be remembered, let alone missed. Both works share similar elements revolving around rain, and mankind’s passing going unnoticed. Though they build off of each other in this way, these pieces also differ in a few areas, such as the belief that mankind or the means of its demolition will be forgotten by all entities. The similarities and differences between the poem and the short story highlight the central themes in both pieces.

Imagine if a person could actually prophesize the future. Try to imagine what the future will hold as individuals, artificial intelligence, and world peace. Ray Bradbury was a poet and writer of idealistic futuristic scenarios and horror. Although he did not want to be classified as a Science Fiction writer, he was exactly that in the eyes of his readers and critics. Ray Bradbury wrote two short stories composed of his ideals of the future: “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “All Summer in a Day. “ Both of these two short stories show a futuristic outlook on life for humans and humanity; although the concepts are expressed differently. “There Will Come Soft Rains” shows the fate of the human race and the end of humanity. Bradbury describes

“The Veldt” and “There Will Come Soft Rains” are both written by Ray Bradbury, and in both stories the house is the most important thing and as both stories take place in the future. While both “The Veldt” and “There Will Come Soft Rains” the houses play a huge role in everyday life, the two houses are fundamentally different when it comes to the houses view of the owners.

“‘Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 20206, today is…’” (Bradbury 7). In Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rain” The House is very high tech, efficient, and helpful. The story takes place in August, 2026; and shows what life could possibly be like if we do not take care of our enviroment.

Having spent one’s entire childhood through war and bombings can inspire many ideas, both positive and negative. From the fear of a nuclear bomb to the proud feeling of witnessing the first American man on the moon, Ray Bradbury took his experiences during World War II and the International Space Race and transformed them into literary pieces, such as “There Will Come Soft Rains”, “The Sound of Thunder”, and “The Pedestrian”. In these short stories, Bradbury includes elements of his own life into the plot, creating a message of caution to the readers through his riveting genre of dystopia. Some topics he stresses include time, technology, and its possible threats to human interaction. Through Bradbury’s unique style, he encapsulates the major issue of the rapid development in society and how it affects people in a social aspect. As new technology and science is innovated, there are many people who debate whether or not it can have harmful side effects to mankind. Among these three short stories, Bradbury uses the stylistic techniques of diction, imagery, and figurative language to convey that as society progresses through time, people lose their sense of humanity.

The motif in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” is rain itself. In the story the house has come to life. The technology has taken over humanity in American culture. The house can clean itself, cook, and pay bills. Even when the family is gone, the house still acts as if they live there still.

Published in 1950 during the Cold War, Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” warns of death and destruction due to nuclear warfare in the distant future, relating to real-world topics that are still prevalent today, and are reflective of the human condition. Taking place in the year 2026, that “distant future” is coming up fast, and the threat of nuclear warfare is as strong as ever. An unusual element of the story is the fact that there are no human characters, merely the personification of a lonely house in terrible denial, still desperate to remain in operation. But despite the absence of human characters, the human condition is still represented in this text through the autonomy of the machine, persisting to serve its purpose even after the extinction of the human race.

The main theme of Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” is technology has a lot of power, but it has its limits. “There Will Come Soft Rains” shows how technology can be both helpful and destructive. In the story, Bradbury suggests that technology is destructive by writing about a radioactive glow. “The house stood alone in a city if rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles”. (328) This evidence shows some kind of nuclear warfare caused mass destruction in the city. On the other hand, Bradbury also shows how technology can be helpful. Bradbury mentions many examples of how technology has affected everyday living. The following examples were mentioned on page 328; “In the living room, the voice clock sang”, “In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its

This house is fully equipped with 21st century technology. Even though there are no people the house works on a specific schedule 24 hours 7 days a week. The story begins normally, alarm clock goes off and right away that’s a sign of people. What was not expected was that there is no humans beings what so ever, it was just one little house by it self, around is just rubble and debree. Since this story is written as if it was in the future, everything is automated. The house is a machine that did everything from cleaning to preparing food. Although people are not present (because of the nuclear holocaust), the house still functions. The climax of the story is when a weak tree bough crashed through the kitchen window, knocking over cleaning solvent over the stove. Instantaneously the kitchen catches fire. The house tried its best to defend itself but as we all know nature is unstoppable. This story is phenomenon; it’s very intense and has you on the edge of your seat the whole time. This story is made for the reader to visualize the actual story, as if you were actually there. All that is left is the lonely house and the wounded dog. What happens in the end really is unexpected and even sad. In Ray Bradbury’s short story “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rain”, He uses various literary devices to warn us about the dangers of technology . Bradbury uses symbols to illustrate that humans are to dependent on technology. He uses the themes of the story to

melancholy world of Ray Bradbury’s “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains.” In his work,