There Will Come Soft Rains

“‘Today is August 4, 2057,’ said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, ‘In the city of Allendale, California.’”

This line reveals the setting of the story. Given that the story was released in 1950, the year 2057 would have implied a distant future with unimaginable technologies. The setting of Allendale, California, by contrast, suggests a familiar place or type of place, at least to American readers.

“The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal.”

Animal imagery recurs throughout the story. This line shows how even the robotic inhabitants of the house resemble animals, and it adds to the sense of activity that belies the narrator’s earlier description of the house as “empty.”

“The five spots of paint—the man, the woman the children, the ball—remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.”

This is one of the story’s most striking and pointed uses of imagery. The blast charred the side of the house except where the bodies of the inhabitants in the yard created silhouettes in the paint. The image described here would likely have been familiar to readers from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“It quivered at each sound, the house did.”

This sentence personifies the house. It is one of several lines which suggest that the house has human-like emotions, reactions, and characteristics. It also reinforces the theme of technology in conflict with nature, as the house is reacting to outside sounds made by animals and natural occurrences.

“How carefully it had inquired, ‘Who goes there? What’s the password?’, and getting no answer from the lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.”

The narrator further personifies the house by describing it as careful and old-maidenly. The description of the old-maidenly preoccupation as “border[ing] on mechanical paranoia” is ironic because the house is indeed mechanical in a literal sense.

“Behind it whirled angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.”

This line personifies not just the house but a set of its robot inhabitants. Notably, it also ascribes a feeling of anger to them. The mice are not simple automated servants; they can form opinions and feel emotions.

“The dog was gone. In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.”

This line describes how the dog’s body is removed and disposed of by the house’s cleaning robots. Given the eventual fate of the house, the use of an incinerator is ironic.

“The nursery walls glowed. Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance.”

This line repeats the motif of technologically created animal facsimile. In the description of the nursery, Bradbury uses fanciful imagery that highlights the advanced, almost magical nature of the technology in the house.

“The house tried to save itself.”

This line is another example of personification. As the fire triggers the house’s defenses, the narrator attributes agency to the house. Inanimate objects might perform set functions, but the use of “tried” suggests a conscious decision.

“But the fire was clever.”

Just as the last line personified the house, this line personifies the fire, describing it with an adjective that would normally be used for a living thing. This line creates a sense that the “clever” fire is outsmarting the house.

“The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.”

This line offers an interesting allusion to the work of famous painters. Given the rarity of such works of art, the line might imply that the house’s former residents are unusually wealthy. This allusion also serves to illustrate the impermanence of not just technology, but also art, when faced with time and nature.

“In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off.”

This line creates further imagery, adding to the descriptions of the house’s destruction. It also blurs the line between the reality of the natural world outside the house and the facsimile of nature created within the house. Though the animals appear on screens of “crystal substance” (251), they react to the fire in real time.

“In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!”

This imagery illustrates the frantic nature of the scene in the house before the fire finally destroys it. It also undercuts the personification of the house to a certain extent. The narrator describes the house in human-like terms when it comes to its attitudes and emotional capacity; however, the house is still limited in terms of its function. Faced with fire, the only thing the stove can do is cook more breakfasts at a faster pace.