In Response to Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” paints a picture of an impending technological apocalypse through a lens of failed domestic idealism. In this story, I will examine common themes found throughout the narrative in relation to the struggle Bradbury often depicts between family, nature, and innovation.
Brief Summary
“There Will Come Soft Rains” begins with a description of machines woven throughout a suburban house performing daily duties such as cooking breakfast, cleaning, and providing information on the date and the weather to its inhabitants, though readers quickly learn that there is nobody home. A “city of rubble” surrounding the building becomes the setting, as Bradbury implies that the town had suffered a nuclear apocalypse; however, the house still stands, splattered with the silhouettes of its former owners. The machines continue their chores. Eventually, readers come to meet a sickly dog, frothing at the mouth, who curls up and dies in the parlor. The machines clean it up, continuing as if nothing had happened.
Bradbury then takes readers on a tour of the house, notably stopping in the nursery, similar to the one described in “The Veldt,” complete with hyperrealistic nature projections filling the room. As the day grows later, a machine reads a nighttime poem to its nonexistent owners, stating that it’s a household favorite. Following the poem, a tree falls onto the house and the building catches fire. The machines fight back, but eventually, the house falls. In the morning, the sun rises while the pile of rubble repeats the date that the world ended.
Analysis
In comparison to Bradbury’s “The Veldt,” nurseries filled with hyperrealistic projections seem to be a common symbol. From “The Veldt,” readers understand that this projector is meant to be an educational tool that allows parents to see into the minds of their children, though it ultimately goes haywire, as it does in “There Will Come Soft Rains”. As the house is becoming destroyed, the animals projected onto the walls react, and the digital landscape is eventually buried in the house. This shows that Bradbury believed in the purity of new life, but that it could be tainted with well-intentioned introductions to technology that would ultimately end in failure.
The poem that the machine reads at the end of the story oddly seems to predict the destruction of the house as well, discussing nature’s apathy to man’s demise. It also mentions a war that would be forgotten, and that eventually, nature would rise again. This seems to happen at the end of the story when, immediately following the poem’s reading, a tree crashes into the house and the building catches fire. The machines try to stand their ground, but the fire defeats them. Once the house falls and turns to rubble, the sun rises and shines on the ashes, solidifying nature’s victory against technology without the help of mankind.
