“Today is October 17th in the city of Naperville, Illinois.”
Imagine that noise echoing throughout your home speakers each morning… sounds a little creepy, right? But yet, most likely as each person awoke this morning, they first turned to their technology which stated to them the date and time (as well as any other preset stipulations). These automated reminders appear completely normal and under control in daily life, but they also (although not to the same extent as smart home speakers) prompt the idea of humanity becoming obsolete. Whether or not a human is present, their creations and machinery will operate as programmed, displaying the time or date or completing other functions. In this way machinery resembles nature, as humans try to adjust and craft it to serve us in everyday life.
Ray Bradbury – a publicly proclaimed science fiction writer – explores a future realm where technology and war has advanced so much so that humans are no longer a part of it. In his short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Bradbury gives life to a house in a post-apocalyptic world. Each morning the home shouts out the time and date, which reveals the setting of the story to be August 2026 in Allendale, California. After announcing the relevant information, the home cooks breakfast, cleans, and even reads bedtime poems in order to please it’s inhabitants – who aren’t there. It appears that in this future, all humans have perished due to a nuclear blast, leaving nothing but silhouettes of their last moments. Despite the disappearance of humanity and of all other homes nearby, the personified home continues on in its daily routine.
Although the home is a bit less creepy than one might imagine a lonely talking house to be, it seems to be going about minding its own business… that is, until its demise. The actions of the house could be construed as almost calming near the beginning – bar the paranoid robotic mice it sends out in search of nonexistent crumbs and its intense questioning of those who reside outdoors. Nevertheless as the conditions grow more harsh, the paranoia and isolation of the home almost creates a feeling of pity in one as it reveals its more human-like qualities.
“The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.”
Just as the humans of the story succumbed to the elements, the house begins a struggle versus nature and fire as well throughout the story, but who will prevail? In a curious tale where the setting doubles as the main character, the age-old battle between technology and nature is brought to an end. Not only is the power conflict an enticing asset of the story, but the description of the way in which the world continues on without humans is intriguing. Humanity has tried to bend and shape technology and nature to heed to its every need, yet with or without us both are capable of survival and humanity is the only one of the three which has proven to be dependent.
Not only does Ray Bradbury analyze the life which nature and technology may have after humans, but he pokes at the neglect humans have shown towards nature and technology. The home only aims to please its inhabitants, and its deeds go unnoticed. Even though the house could easily destroy those who dwell inside of it, it continues to care for them after they are long gone. The kindness and care which is attempts to provide lead the reader towards a feeling of guilt. As Professor Tajay analyzes, the house shows feelings of “fear, disgust, and sadness”. The feelings of the home only provoke more intense feelings from the reader as one pictures the abandoned condition of the home. Each description throughout the piece only engrosses one further and further into the story as they visualize this feasible path of the near future.
“It had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia. It quivered at each sound, the house did”
When delving into deeper research, it is shown that this specific piece comes from a collection of short stories called the Martian Chronicles. The Martian Chronicles portray the devastation shown after atomic bombs (as Bradbury was alive during the dropping and aftermath of the first nuclear blasts). The humans flee a devastated earth and colonize on Mars. “There Will Come Soft Rains” is shown as one of the most popular passages as it stands alone as an eerie description of life on Earth while the colonists continue their story elsewhere.
Although personally I plan to read the entirety of the Martian Chronicles as my curiosity peaked during my analysis of a single passage of it, if you choose to only read one passage, I would recommend mainly “There Will Come Soft Rains”. The predictions, mood, and literary elements displayed throughout it fosters an inquisitive mindset in the reader, more so than many other short stories which I have analyzed. Plus, if you have a project where you have to analyze both the setting and characters, it makes the work quite a bit easier!
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