Ray Bradbury and "There Will Come Soft Rains"

“Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine up on the heaped rubble and steam: ‘Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…’”

-“There Will Come Soft Rains”

The Martian Chronicles, pg. 171-172

Ray Bradbury

In the final scene from Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” a lone house with all its many mechanisms is described as the only one remaining in the wake of nuclear holocaust in the city of Allendale, California: “The house stood alone…” (167).  By way of efficient design it continues on performing daily services for a family that no longer lives within its walls, a family who, by the application of equally efficient technology, no longer lives at all. When a fluke fire destroys the house and all its fine-tuned functions along with it, all that remains is a fragment of tech calculating time on an infinite loop and a voice that speaks into a void that cannot answer back. Throughout the text, Bradbury demonstrates that the house was not just designed for the convenience of the family, it was a part of them in that every facet of family life within the home was synced to the house itself. It fed them, bathed them, put them to sleep, set up their games, alerted them to weather shifts, watered their lawn, read them poetry, and in their absence, the house continued trying to fulfill its purpose. This final scene demonstrates how technology can endure even after the reason for its existence has itself ceased to exist, but that this endurance becomes a series of meaningless repetitions in the absence of a Maker. Ursula Le Guin states in her 1976 essay, “if we destroy ourselves, we destroy consciousness,” and by making the house the focal point, indeed, the main character of “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Bradbury gives a very vivid support of her argument. Without a human presence, all the many mechanisms of humanity are made useless. Even the calculation of time becomes an absurdity in the absence of those whose lives are dictated by the perception of it passing. 

-LBS 499: Nuclear Holocaust Science Fiction, Fall 2011

Journal #4