There Will Come Soft Rain Personification Essay

A house Is Not A Home: The limitation of Technology through Personification
In the May 6th, 1950 issue of Collier’s magazine, a short story first appeared titled “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” written by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury would later include this story into his book The Martian Chronicle’s, a collection of short science fiction pieces. The story takes place in a dystopian future in the City of Allendale, California. There, a house owned by the McClellan family is the only thing that remains standing after a horrific occurrence (a presumed nuclear explosion) destroys the rest of the city. The house is a sophisticated “smart” house, where everything is automated. Everyday tasks are completed without human intervention; this is convenient since there are no humans to be found. The house takes care of the family that once lived there, even though they are gone. In the end, the house meets its demise and burns down when a tree crashes through the window starting a fire that spreads from the kitchen.
The story is set 76 years into the future and gives a sense of wonder. The house has it’s own voice and personality. It is a technological marvel and more advanced than the average house today. Bradbury uses personification at first glance to

take on the role of the family, they have died, but a story still needs to be told. Although personification is commonly used to make readers associate emotions and connect with the object that is personified, Bradbury uses personification to show the limitations of the technology through the artificial emotions of the house, mainly by making the house as a mother to the entire family, causing them to be blind to the world. The story has no narrator, so the house takes on this role. The family is no longer living, yet the house speaks to them and makes them food. It takes on the role of mother, entertainer, protector, and many other things. The house is a living record of who the family once was.
In “There Will Come Soft Rains”, personification is used through out the entire story.

The very first sentence, “In the living room the voice-clock sang…” the house sings to the uninhabited room. Many aspects of the house have characteristics that relate to human action. Bradbury does this to connect the reader to the house. If the house is more like a human then the reader is more likely to have empathy for it than if it was portrayed as just a building that completed tasks. There are no actual living humans in the story so the main character is arguably the house. As the story progresses, the house is a record of the family, a deeper insight into who they were. This insight shows that technology controlled their

lives.
As the story progress, Bradbury reveals that the house is the only remaining man-made structure left in the area. It is standing alone surrounded by rubble and ashes. The city appears to have been in some kind of nuclear attack considering the radioactive glow coming off of it. Radioactive glow is a tell tale sign that a nuclear weapon has been used. A war must have broken out that caused the city to be attacked. The attack seems to have been unexpected; the image of the family is burned onto the house as they are all outside playing and doing very mundane things. They didn’t even have time to look around or notice what was going on. The boy and girls ball is still in the air, frozen in time. This scene depicts the innocence of the family, just enjoying the day outside. Since the house provided so much for the family, they appear to be oblivious to what is going on around them, technology has made them ignorant.
The family’s ignorance can be seen throughout the text. The image of the family outside, seemingly enjoying the day as a nuclear explosion happens in the background portrays them as children. The house portrays the mother; the real mother is picking up flowers while her children are evaporated. It is hard to imagine, for how advanced the house appears to be, that it had no prior knowledge of the impending attack. Just as the house yelled “Fire, fire, fire!” when it was being burned, it may have alerted them to what was going on. The family even needed their chores reminded to them, so being outside of the house they were unprotected out in nature. The house’s role of the mother would be to keep them safe from harm. But as hard as the house tried, it could not save the family.
The “mother” is still going about the day as if the family is still there, ready for whatever is needed of her. There is an eerie aura around everything the house is doing. It is running through all of these mundane tasks and nobody is around to even know that anything has happened. Technology at the time when humans were still around appears to have made their lives much easier. The house does almost everything for them and reminds the family of the few tasks they have to complete themselves, such as paying the bills. Breakfast is made hot and once it is over the house cleans up the dishes and incinerates the trash. There are no steps in the routine for the family to intervene. The “mother” is taking care of everything so that the children can play. The house still has its motherly instinct as it runs through its chores without anyone to appreciate them.
Being the mother of the family, the house also provides entertainment. At one point in the nursery, there is a display of wild animals of all colors and varieties. There is also a scene where card tables and snacks come out from the walls. The house reads a poem to the mother, the house does so much that the actual mother has time to stop and listen to poetry. It even uses rhymes to remind the family of the time and also other things that are going on. To a child and even to an adult these rhymes make for a more entertaining atmosphere than a simple command. Entertainment plays a large role in the daily lives of people, when everything is accomplished with the day and all tasks are completed, entertainment is what people turn to. Entertainment is needed for relaxation, but too much of it can lead to an obliviousness to the things that are actually important, such as an incoming nuclear blast. Since the house completes the tasks, there is more time for entertainment. This is also provided by the house, which shows how important the house is to these people. All aspects of their lives seem to be going through their personified technological caregiver.
The poem that the house reads is Mrs. McClellan’s favorite and is read around nine o’clock just as the family would have been relaxing for the evening. The poem is about how if mankind suddenly perished from war, then nature would even notice that mankind had vanished. The poem chosen by Bradbury is interesting for two reasons, the first being that personification is used to express how nature hasn’t noticed that mankind is gone, just as personification is used to show that the house doesn’t know that the McClellan family is dead. “And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn would scarcely know that we were gone.” Bradbury has layered personification on different planes of the story to express that no one is left we have all perished from relying on technology. The other reason is that in the poem, mankind was destroyed by war in the same way that a presumed nuclear war is what destroyed the city of Allendale, California and killed the McClellan family. Robert Dominianni’s article “Ray Bradbury's 2026: A Year with Current Value." shows that Bradbury was being ironic by using this poem. He states “Bradbury’s exceptional sense of irony comes into view in a grotesque way”(Dominanni 50). The fact that the poem is being read to a completely empty house by the automated narrator shows the distortion that technology has created (Dominanni 50). This distortion being that art, one humanities greatest expression is pointless now. With no one there the story has no purpose and its content is a mirror into the scene in which it is read. The poem shows the negative affects of technology. If technology is allowed to completely take over the lives of humans then no good can come of it.
As the house takes on the role of the actual mother, it is obvious that Mrs. McClellan is no longer needed. The article 'You Don't Prepare Breakfast … You Launch It Like A Missile': The Cold War Kitchen And Technology's Displacement Of The Home" by Rebecca Devers makes the suggestion “not just that the McClellan family is dead, but The Family itself is obsolete”(Devers 14). Devers capitalization of “Family” means that technology hasn’t just replaced the McClellan family, but the idea of family in general as a unit who works together. The family no longer has to do anything they have become lazy. Devers goes on to assert that the house can provide goods and services, but it has no emotional connection to what humans deem valuable (Devers 14). Technology has made humans in this futuristic world dependent on it.
But the scene with the family dog at first glance, seems to contradict the argument that technology has made the family dependent. The house lets in the family dog as it is whining on the porch. It somehow survived the blast and is in need of assistance. The dog comes in and tracks mud and debris through the house. The mechanical mice that the house uses to clean are angry with this. Bradbury makes it seem as if real emotion is behind them, but it is merely programmed. The dog is now sickly and very thin from what it once was. This is a result of the family’s death; therefore they are no longer able to care for it. The dog runs through the house, but shortly realizes that there is no one there. The house is making a large breakfast of pancakes and the dogs can smell it. The dog goes crazy since the house is not giving anything to it, though it is apparent that the dog is starving. The dog dies and the house disposes of the dog’s remains into the incinerator.
The family wasn’t dependent on the house to take care of the dog. They must have done it themselves or the house wouldn’t have let it die. This is a rare scene in the story where the house doesn’t take on the role of a human and complete a mundane task that would seem fit for it to do. In fact, this shows a limitation to technology and provides another reason as to why the McClellan family shouldn’t have become so dependent on the house. The house has no sympathy for the dog and thus allows it to die. If it is not in it’s programming to care for it then the house has no reason to. Michael Orth, a contributor to Utopian Studies, says “At any rate, computers have often (we might almost say traditionally) appeared in speculative fiction as monsters”(Orth 79). His claim is visible with the example of the dog. The house is a “monster” it only does what it was told to do and nothing more. The McClellan family was comfortable with this fact and they paid the cost.
Furthermore, as the story begins it isn’t obvious that something has happened to the family. The first quarter of the text is about the house running through the daily tasks. The reader is taking in everything that the house can do, it is easy to miss the small notations that something bad has happened and that the family is no longer there. Finally, the text goes into detail of the families image is burned onto the house and it is apparent that the family that once occupied the house is dead. The house was distracting the reader from what was really going on, the technology kept them occupied. This is same thing that happened to the family in the story. Technology kept them occupied and thus they were distracted from what was really going on. Bradbury uses the text the same way that he used the house, to construct a distraction.