Analysis Of August 2026 : There Will Come Soft Rains By Ray Bradbury

The married couple were casually conversing in their household as their two daughters, “were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps” (Bradbury 1). The laughter of their two daughters in their background embraced a home filled with life and love. With such an absurd question the husband asked, the two remained calm. Bradbury was able to describe a setting and a background at peace and relaxation to the characters despite the situation presented.

Overcast sky, dark wind, cold light, and gloomy actions are the characteristics and effects of a rainy day. Rain is often the precursor to disaster in a story because of the natural feelings of sadness that it brings. Therefore, it is appropriate that a rain motif should be present in “There Will Come Soft Rains”, written by Ray Bradbury. The rain makes a subtle but important appearance in the story, which allows certain events and objects to express their feelings more adequately in the themes of emptiness and the rising power of technology.

At first, the house just sits there, resisting everything that wants it gone. Representing Carl and how he does not want to budge, how he’s determined to accomplish what Ellie always dreamed of , just like a house’s job is to stand

If this story had been told from a first person point of view, the reader my not have gotten this in depth of a description of the setting. Without the reader understanding that the house was boarded up and abandoned, to the point where it seems

Bradbury’s imaginings of the futuristic house are bold in attempting to convince the reader that it had human qualities and that the house had an almost above superiority over humans. “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 religion continued senselessly, uselessly.” (Bradbury 2) Bradbury describes the characteristics of the house, what it can do versus what humans would normally do in handling everyday tasks and chores. Almost with a religious cadence, the futuristic house continues to do its set duties.

In Ray Bradbury’s “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”, The McClellan family home seems equipped with every imaginable technological innovation, but it fails to provide more human qualities like love (Devers). This excerpt is an example of how the author expresses personification in this short story. The house has each and every technical tool that it needs to function, yet, it does not have the love of its owners any longer. Along with personification, Bradbury uses the rhetorical mode of pathos to demonstrate how the house continues to carry out its daily functions even though the surrounding society has suffered. An example of how Bradbury attempts to capture the reader's emotional psyche is, “In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off….Ten more voices died…”. This allows readers to feel sorry for the perishing animals that are dying in the burning house. As Bradbury uses personification and pathos to engage readers into the short story, readers can emotionally relate and visualize a house that continues to function without a society.

In the short stories Fever Dream and There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, a theme of evil and violence builds as the stories progresses. Through his use of figurative language and diction, Bradbury develops the plot to ultimately lead to physical and mental destruction.

In the futuristic short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Ray Bradbury, the author, utilizes tone and figurative language to generate a lonesome mood. Set in the year 2026, he portrays a innovative house in an environment in which humanity no longer exists. On the outside of the house, the author illustrates a “silhouette in paint of a man mowing the lawn… a woman bent to pick flowers… a small boy… and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down” (328). Solitarily and inconsolably, the images of the households remnants on the walls manifests the sublime lifestyle before the deaths of its residents. However, the once buoyant lives of the family dissipate as the house lingers alone.

In Allendale, California, there lies a lonely house whom manages to take care of it’s killed owner, Mrs. Mclellan. In the visionary short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Ray Bradbury values personification; he gives soul and feelings to the lonely house and all of the non-living objects within it. The last standing house in Allendale, California, pursued its active, occupied agenda uninformed its owners were demolished by an atomic bomb in the year 2026. It was the last house in good condition, it was stable, and it functioned perfectly, until nature raised up. “The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes” (Bradbury 216)! Bradbury uses personification to describe how the house was lonely, didn’t have company, and how it was isolated

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

functions without humans living inside of it. “In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock,

In some typical stories, there is a main character who travels on a journey, meets friends and battles foes, and, in the end, celebrates victory. However, in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”, the setting is the main character of the story. His creative use of personification helps create the setting into the character.

As Bradbury tells the story he says the exact time each thing happened, like an alarm going off each day, because the house cannot think for itself to stop. The house continues on with the normal routine telling Mrs. McClellan a random poem at

Danielewski uses the Freud’s uncanny concept to create the feeling of unsettled mystery within the walls of the expanding house. Freud’s definition of uncanny implies that “some things must be added to the novel and unfamiliar if it is to become uncanny.” [insert citation #3] Not only is the house uncanny, but the complicated multi-layered narratives, footnotes and the book itself are just as uncanny. The core story in the House of

Ray Bradbury writes in, Dandelion Wine, “I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.” Ray Bradbury's short story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” begins in August 4, 2026, with a population decimated by an atomic bomb. The short story ends on August 5, 2026. In between this time a house, outfitted with an array of technology, performs all the daily tasks of the cooking, cleaning, and entertainment yet, silhouettes burnt on a wall on the outside of the house shows a man mowing the lawn, and a woman picking flowers and, a children playing