Human Extinction In Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rain

In Ray Bradbury’s " There Will Come Soft Rains, " he fabricates a story with two themes about the end of the world. The first theme is that humans are so reliant on technology, that it leads the destruction of the world, and the second theme is that a world without humans would be peaceful, however no one would be able to enjoy it. Bradbury uses literary devices, such as narrative structure, personnification, and pathos to effectively address human extinction. One aspect which illustrates how he portrays human extinction can be identified as narrative structure, he structured the story in a way that it slowly abolishes the facade of technological improvements made by people to reveal the devastation that technology can cause. The story started

out futuristic since it takes place in the year two-thousand twenty-six and there was a talking clock which told the family when to wake up, eat, and fall asleep. The house knew everything about the family, including their schedules, and their favorite food, songs, and poems, but the family died long ago from a nuclear bomb. In the story there is a poem called “ Soft Rains ” that is a clue that no one is living on the earth, “ And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white; Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn; Would scarcely know that we were gone " (Bradbury). The family was disintegrated in a nuclear blast, yet the house continued to perform its daily functions. The climax of the story was when the house is set on fire and it tries to put out the fire and save itself, but it fails so the house collapses. Despite the fact that the house collapsed, the clock continues to announce the time, in an endless loop, “ Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: ‘ Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is… ’ (Bradbury). He emphasizes technology as a main part of the story by personifying the house, it is the main character and it is the only thing that speaks in the story to show that everyone has died, except for a dog that was suffering alone, until it dies. The house portrays a few human emotions, like sighing when it cleans up, talking, and digesting, for instance,“hot water whirled the eggs down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea ” (Bradbury).

Personifying the house allows the reader to view the world in the house’s perspective, establishing the petrification of the world. The fact that the house had no idea that the family perished, expresses that technology will do what it is programmed to do, but it does not have emotions, so it would be unaware of our absence. Bradbury compels the reader to feel despair, since he displays that the only living creature, the dog, was lonely and died. The reader can infer that the dog must have suffered for a long time, and feel compassion for what it must have been through, because “ The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores ” (Bradbury). The most heartbreaking scene with the dog was when it died, for the reason that it was treated like trash, “ The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire...Two o'clock, sang a voice. Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical

wind. Two-fifteen. The dog was gone, ” (Bradbury). The house is a control freak and extremely organized, it does not let any animals touch the house and cleans every speck of dirt. It rapidly disposed of the dog without emotion, to convey that technology cannot care for care for any living thing, and if the world ends they would not feel compassion. There is a general agreement that Ray Bradbury used narrative structure, pathos, and personification to satisfactorily address the end of humanity.