Soft Rains Short Story This Short Story Link Utopia

Soft Rains

In Ray Bradbury's short story "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains," a mechanical house continues operation even though there is no one left alive for it to provide services for. In the world of the Utopia, the perfect society would ensure that such a house was erected for the purpose of pleasing the humans residing inside of it. The concept of Utopia is a society in which everything is ideal and nothing negative is allowed to exist. Dystopia is the complete opposite, a world in which nothing is good or happy. Everything is desolate and full of despair. Ray Bradbury's story is an example of the latter.

At seven o'clock, the house comes to life although no other life will come. It makes breakfast and tries to awaken humans who have been long dead from a presumed nuclear war. This is indicated by the following passage: "The house stood alone in a city of 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" (Bradbury 1). In Dystopia, mankind exists in a future, if he exists at all, where his time on the earth is precarious and life can be extinguished at any moment. This story makes it clear that this is a post-Apocalyptic world and that the only life that could possibly exist in this harsh environment are mechanical.

There are hints throughout the story that the only thing alive is the artificial mechanisms within the house itself. "Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again" (Bradbury 1). The only thing that lives is the artificial house and the random animals and birds that happen to pass by. Even the animals who had survived the nuclear fallout are not long for this world. The house lets in a dog that once belonged to this home and the family who have passed away. "The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in through the house, tracking mud" (Bradbury 2). Anything that has lived through the nuclear was will soon die, even the house that mindlessly functions without a purpose. "It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died" (2). The house, sensing death and fearing its own impending demise removes the debris.