Analyzing: There Will Come Soft Rains

¶ … plot summary, listing characters, styles author. The bleak promise of technology: There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury The short story "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury is set in 2026 but was originally written in 1950. The tale reflects a common 1950s conception of a future in which most people's lives would be made much easier by technology. However, in stark contrast to the apparent ease of the life of someone living in the projected 2026, there is a continual sense of horror in the events that unfold.

Because as easy as modern day life has been made by technology, it has also been destroyed by technology: the inhabitants of the house have been wiped out in an apparent nuclear holocaust. The tale begins with breakfast, as the seemingly magical automated stove churns out perfect eggs and bacon, just enough for the entire family of four to eat. In an interesting twist, the stove even produces beverages like milk and coffee. But the technology is useless: there is no one there to eat it.

Later, when the starving dog of the blighted family is desperate for food, he dies rather than is fed because the house cannot really respond to his needs. "It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup" (Bradbury 2). The fate of the family is only obliquely referenced: once alive, they now are ashy shadows against the wall of the house.

"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" (Bradbury 1).

Bradbury does not fully explain why it is necessary for the parents to garden in such a technologically-sophisticated house in which all human needs are taken care of (or how the dog survived the blast) but poetically the image conjures up a kind of eternal, perfect vision of a 1950s suburban family that is now no more.

Although the story is set in our present day, it clearly reflects the preoccupations of the author and the Cold War era in which he wrote, since all four people seem to have died in due to nuclear war. (This is not specifically stated, though, and Bradbury leaves open the possibility that some other type of horrific act may have ended their lives). The dominant theme of Bradbury's short work is that technology, although impressive, has not saved the family and in fact has killed them.

Technology goes on in the absence of the human intelligence that designed it, even though there is no real need for technology if all humanity is obliterated. At times, humorously in the story, Bradbury conveys a kind of emotional reality to the technology of the house, such as when the robotic mice clean: "Behind it [the dog] whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience" (Bradbury 2).

But although the computerized mice might sound angry, they are incapable of feeling real emotion for the death of humanity. The house continues to futilely serve the humans it was designed to save, even once they are no more, manufacturing leisure (like images of animals on the nursery wall, a bridge.