7 AM.
You wake up, you get ready, and you eat a quick breakfast. Within less than an hour of time, you are on your way out, leaving your home for your everyday activities—school, work, or other responsibilities. In your time away, your home remains empty, seemingly awaiting your return. You continue on with your day, and the thoughts of what is happening in your home at that moment are almost surely fleeting. However, while you live your life, your house lives a life of its own.
Don’t worry. Your house is not hosting block parties behind your back in your own backyard. Instead, your house carries on its inner tasks: the air still circulates and energy still flows through the outlets and the stoves.
True, your house is far from having a mind of its own. But how long will this remain true?
According to Ray Bradbury short story There Will Come Soft Rains, not very long. In the futuristic world that he creates, Bradbury details a world in which technology has advanced greatly. The house at the center of his story is overflowing with all kinds of technology, and this particular house does live a life with a mind of its own.
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A House and Technology
Just one house remains.
In Bradbury’s story, the rest of the city has been decimated and left as a pile of ruins. Animals wander around aimlessly, and there is no sign of any human presence. The only characters in this story? The house and the forces of nature. The house is very technologically advanced, and so it acts on its own, caring for nearly all possible human needs. As the story progresses, the house continues to carry on its daily schedule despite the lack of any of its owners. However, as the day closes in on its end, the house does as well.
The immediate setting that Bradbury depicts immediately shares one part of his message: the destruction that mankind can face with the technology that it possesses. With everything in ruins, it can be assumed that the emerging technology of the time, nuclear bombs, had caused the damage present at the story’s start. And where had the owning family gone? Sadly, they had been disintegrated as they went about their daily lives, their final acts captured in the silhouettes on the side of the house.
Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Bradbury had witnessed the possible destruction—cities leveled, millions of lives lost, multitudes of distress. His setting can only be a representation of what he believed could occur if bomb warfare had continued and spread: bleakness, misery, injury, death.
This message serves as an extension of the title. Bradbury includes a poem in his story… and you might be aware that this poem holds the same title as his story. The poem, by Sara Teasdale, was written nearly forty years prior. In what event? None other than the final years of another world war, World War I. As critics Melissa Girard and Catherine Sustana write, this poem was written after the Sedition Act—which outlawed war opposition—in order to warn how violence could destroy humankind.
You may be asking how Bradbury’s work fits in with the conclusion of the poem: that nature outlasts all. As you may expect, nature outlasts the house, so technology did not gain full control. Both nature and technology are personified through the forces of nature and the house respectively throughout the story. But why would these ideas be personified? The answer would be to show the limitations of technology and the strength of nature in humans. The technology in the house acts human in ways—by trying to tend to all human needs and protecting itself—but falls short in other ways, namely being able to adapt. Extending this further, nature’s continuance in its personified state and forms shows the invincibility of nature relative to technology.
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Bradbury’s Beliefs
Sure, Bradbury wanted to communicate the destructive nature of technology, similar to in his other works such as Fahrenheit 451, but he also did promote the benefits. The ability of the house to function on its own and accomplish so much with its technology, from cooking to cleaning to setting up parties, is a testament to the possibilities of technology. Technology and its effects can swing both ways.
So do Bradbury’s own opinions align with this duality of technology? The answer: definitely. Bradbury was a famous writer than liked to communicate his beliefs against technology. In fact, he held such a strong personal opinion against technology that he swore off Yahoo and refused to share his work online in one of his interviews with the New York Times. However, he also promoted the ideas of exploring other planets in the universe, especially Mars in his other works. Bradbury himself knew that while he did not believe he needed to use technology personally, technology could have great benefits if used in the right ways.
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Today and Tomorrow
Today’s world is moving towards an increased technology presence every day. People are using technology as a means of solving almost every pressing problem. Take drunk driving for example. Almost everyone is aware of the damage that this issue can cause, and some of these people have made a recent effort to diminish this problem, using detectors in cars that would restrict drunk drivers from driving in the first place. There are clearly beneficial ways of using technology such as this, but as Bradbury cautions, there is also a need to consider the consequences of increased technology as well in other areas.
We need to be aware of all the impacts of our actions and choices with technology, and There Will Come Soft Rains is an excellent story to start to consider the dual views of technology that are not always thought about. The true nature of technology will only become more apparent as it becomes more common.
So, now with the possibilities and the essential questions of technology after reading Bradbury’s story, how will you balance and embrace technology?
What will you let your life’s house do as the age of tomorrow approaches? Just one tip: don’t let its technology run away from you.
Works Cited (Including Hyperlinks)
https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/drunk-driving-technology-us-mandate/
https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/criticism/melissa-girard-there-will-come-soft-rains
https://www.thoughtco.com/analysis-there-will-come-soft-rains-2990477
https://www.biography.com/writer/ray-bradbury
https://www.npr.org/2012/06/08/154524695/ray-bradbury-its-lack-that-gives-us-inspiration
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/atomic-bomb-history
Images
https://www.icanw.org/the-facts/catastrophic-harm/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombings/
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/books/ray-bradbury-popularizer-of-science-fiction-dies-at-91.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=AD224EA26E776AF2085B8CA93FDDDFCA&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL
https://www.thoughtco.com/analysis-there-will-come-soft-rains-2990477
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9127853/hiroshima-nagasaki-nuclear-taboo
I love your analysis of the theme Technology vs Nature. I remember that when I first read this story in middle school I took it simply as just another futuristic dystopian sci-fi story. However, since then, I’ve gained a greater sense of how Bradbury’s future is a very realistic possibility. Seeing issues such as mobile phone addiction, fossil fuel emissions, and potential malicious uses of artificial intelligence has changed my perspective on how we should use technology.
From your own experience, do you think that Bradbury is right when he argues that nature will always overcome technology? Also, do you think that modern society is headed in the right or wrong direction given how much we depend on tech?
I do believe that Bradbury is right in his argument that nature prevails over technology. The reason for this phenomena would revolve around what I believe is the general purpose of technology: to harness parts of nature that was previously under human control. Only when areas of nature are understood or realized can they be approached with technology, and yet, there are still several aspects of nature that are unknown or not understood even today. Consequently, research and exploration continues, such as by scientific efforts to determine if life away from earth exists.
To answer your question about the direction of society, I believe that the answer varies on what technology you are referring to. When it comes to technologies of convenience, are people becoming too dependent. Sure, the answer can be yes for many individuals with devices like calculators. Rather than learning how to apply and practice their arithmetic, people resort to the ease of the calculator. However, these same convenience technologies allow us to spend more time on other areas, increasing our efficiency. So when would we be moving in the right direction with tech? With research to unearth more of nature, we are surely moving in the right direction. Using our abilities to elucidate areas of nature that we do not know will ultimately allow us to increase what we do know and pinpoint more of what we don’t know.
Interesting post that covered a lot of material! What stuck with me the most about your post was its relevancy in our modern world (which you touched on at the end). Global warming has become a rapidly growing and urgent problem that is very much the result of technology. That question of whether nature, more specifically the human race, will outlive and persevere is becoming ever more pertinent.
Honestly, Ray Bradbury’s visions of the future and their accuracy even decades later is a bit crazy. You mention that he often feared the control of the Internet (through refusing to publish his work online and getting off of Yahoo), which has only become an even more problematic issue with modern usage of social media. At the same time, you also talk about how he recognized the dual nature of technology and its benefits, like being able to explore other planets. We continue to realize the importance of space exploration today, which just goes to show how much of a visionary Ray Bradbury was.
These past few years, I’ve started to question technology even more, especially with Chromebooks. Thinking back to the middle school days, I can’t remember how classes functioned without individual computers given to each student. At the same time, I feel like my productivity and focus has been gradually diminishing and I’ve wondered whether the introduction of technology into education has been a cause of that. Nonetheless, I guess it’s still important to recognize how technology helps our classes. This just goes to show once again the duality of technology usage.
I definitely agree with your analysis of chromebooks in our classes today. I also can’t really remember a time in which we didn’t have chromebooks and other technology such as phones, and this has meant that it is much easier to get distracted. With so much information and many possibilities, it is very easy to get sidetracked, but it also provides access to heaps of information that can also be very useful. It seems that the idea of duality applies to more aspects of life than would seem: from technology usage to identity to decisions and more.