There Will Come Soft Rains
Fink 1
Elyse Fink
Professor Parsons-Zammit
English 122
23 April 2014
Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains Ray Bradbury's short story There Will Come Soft Rains is set in a post nuclear extinction of mankind. The only thing that remained in the city was a self-sufficient house full of robots and other technology created to cater to the human occupants that no longer exist. The house carried on, day in and day out, as if the humans were still dwelling there. The house, with all of its technological advances had no idea it was no longer serving anyone. In this world technology is embraced to the point of thinking it embraces humans back. No matter how life-like things are created to be, they do not, and will not have emotional ties to mankind. In this short story Bradbury showed that technology is oblivious to human existence. In this world of dystopia, Bradbury portrayed the house and the robots as life-like creatures. Bradbury uses personification to describe how each program in the house works. He used the phrase “The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religions continued senselessly, uselessly” to demonstrate how the house was filled with mindless robots programmed to cater to the humans which he terms as the gods (Bradbury 872). The ritual of religion he wrote is describing all of the tasks the house performs on a daily basis, such as Fink 2 making breakfast. Some of the robots were made to be animals, such as the cleaning mice. Not only did these robots take the form of a living creature, Bradbury also described behavior traits nearly as emotions that are only seen in living things. He wrote that the cleaning mice robots were “angry” at the inconvenience of cleaning up the mud the living dog brought into the house (Bradbury 873). Robots do not get angry, as they do not have true emotions.
Elyse Fink
Professor Parsons-Zammit
English 122
23 April 2014
Ray Bradbury: There Will Come Soft Rains Ray Bradbury's short story There Will Come Soft Rains is set in a post nuclear extinction of mankind. The only thing that remained in the city was a self-sufficient house full of robots and other technology created to cater to the human occupants that no longer exist. The house carried on, day in and day out, as if the humans were still dwelling there. The house, with all of its technological advances had no idea it was no longer serving anyone. In this world technology is embraced to the point of thinking it embraces humans back. No matter how life-like things are created to be, they do not, and will not have emotional ties to mankind. In this short story Bradbury showed that technology is oblivious to human existence. In this world of dystopia, Bradbury portrayed the house and the robots as life-like creatures. Bradbury uses personification to describe how each program in the house works. He used the phrase “The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religions continued senselessly, uselessly” to demonstrate how the house was filled with mindless robots programmed to cater to the humans which he terms as the gods (Bradbury 872). The ritual of religion he wrote is describing all of the tasks the house performs on a daily basis, such as Fink 2 making breakfast. Some of the robots were made to be animals, such as the cleaning mice. Not only did these robots take the form of a living creature, Bradbury also described behavior traits nearly as emotions that are only seen in living things. He wrote that the cleaning mice robots were “angry” at the inconvenience of cleaning up the mud the living dog brought into the house (Bradbury 873). Robots do not get angry, as they do not have true emotions.