What Is The Juxtaposition In There Will Come Soft Rain

The futuristic story begins by familiarizing the reader with this house that can do pretty much anything a normal family would do, such as cook, clean, and read. Every hour a mechanical voice box stops to announce the date, weather, or event that is happening at that particular time. “There Will Come Soft Rains” is arranged chronologically, giving the effect that everything is in order, but the more you read the more you realize it’s not. At a point in the story, the mechanical voice box recites a poem by Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, about how even after human extinction the nature and animals will still remain unaffected. Even though the house is no longer occupied by anybody it still continues to carry out its day to day activities with

no problem. “There Will Come Soft Rains” says, that having an amazing house that is able to cater to your every need is not beneficial if you no longer exist because of it.
Bradbury uses a different approach to telling the story that I find very clever. Because the story is about mankind being wiped out by a nuclear explosion he chooses to tell the story without using a single human as a character, which makes the story more powerful. Bradbury uses personification to give the nonhuman characters human-like characteristics. It is also used quite frequently to describe the actions of the house for example, “Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would.” This is significant because it helps the reader understand that nobody is living there. Using personification Bradbury makes the house become the main character of the story. It also presents many questions like: how is the house talking and where are the people at? The answers to these questions, which can be inferred through the actions of the house, constantly remind us that there once was a family that lived here.
Imagery and juxtaposition are also key elements when developing the theme of the story.

Ray Bradbury uses juxtaposition by contrasting this imaginary world that is set in the twenty-first century to very ordinary actions. Although the house is automated and again, empty, the kitchen is making the ideal breakfast for a family of four, and singing basic nursery rhymes such as “Rain, rain, go away...”. These humanlike events do not compare to the unoccupied house. The description of the house becomes more animalistic and almost oxymoronic when the, “rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal.” The almost constant cleaning of the tiny robot mice suggest that the previous household was very orderly and precise. Through Bradbury’s description of the outside of the house and its surroundings he indirectly tells the reader about the events that may have occurred. A burnt “silhouette” of the family imprinted on the west wall of the house is the only thing left of them. In the image each person is doing something picking flowers, moving the lawn, playing with a ball. This was a family having a good time, but little did they know the catastrophe they were about to experience would end their

life.
Using key elements, such as irony and metaphors, Bradbury reinforces the state of fear that the house is in. When the house hears something outside scurrying around it is described as being on a “mechanical paranoia”, because it shuts itself completely up to keep the inside safe. This is ironic because the house was created by humans, but now it is trying to protect itself from them. It is also ironic that the human’s developed technology has outlived them. Bradbury says that the “house was an altar… but the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly”. He is comparing the relationship between the house and the humans to a practiced religion. The humans are considered as the gods who taught, or programmed, the house until it knew how to work on its own. Even after the humans are gone the house continues to do the different things they were taught, like followers of a religion would do.
When the dog is introduced to the story “now gone to bone and covered with sores”, it is hard to understand what its purpose is. Even in the condition it is in the dog somehow find its way through the atomic rubble outside to its home. Meanwhile, the house continues to do as it is programmed still not realizing the family has gone. It is used to show how big the difference is between the technology and the humans, and the animal’s instinct to come home to its family. Throughout the story the house is described using human-like characteristics, but the dog seems to have more sense than the house does.
Later, you’re given more information about the absence of the family when the house recites a poem by Sara Teasdale called “There Will Come Soft Rains”. This poem describes how nature remains unaffected after the extinction of humans as a result of a war. Teasdale explains that nature will actually not even notice the humans are gone by saying, “Spring herself, when she woke at dawn/ Would scarcely know that we are gone.” Even though the house claims that it “shall select a poem at random,” the choice of the poem is anything but random. It reaffirms the plot and theme throughout the short story by Bradbury.
Bradbury’s use of this poem is for both foreshadowing and irony. When the house does not receive an answer to which poem Mrs. McClellan would like to be read, he refers to its choice as her favorite. It is very ironic that the owner of this house would choose this poem as her favorite, considering the state that her family is in now. Teasdale’s version of “There Will Come Soft Rains” makes the reader question whether nature will fight for the humans or not. The short story shows Mrs. McClellan’s fascination to nature by describing the fake animals she used to decorate her nursery such as, “blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance.” This makes one assume that she may have favored the poem because it had “frogs in pools singing at night, /And wild plum trees in tremulous white”. Mrs. McClellan obviously did not read deeply enough to understand that the poem was really about the unimportance of humankind.
The poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” also foreshadows the end of the house, which comes in the following paragraph. Bradbury disagrees greatly with the claim of the poem, and makes a claim himself that not only does nature care for mankind, it will also take part and fight back for them. The poem by Teasdale say that nature will feel some sort of happiness when man has finally been destroyed, but the truth, shown in Bradbury’s story, is that nature was also negatively affected by this destruction. The entire city surrounding the house is “rubble and ashes”.
Teasdale’s argument is that war is pointless when humankind is really insignificant to nature when looking at the bigger picture. The poem is very optimistic, even though it actually seems like the complete opposite. Teasdale’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” gives the reader a feeling of indifference. It states that earth or nature will not care or know whether or not humans have come or gone, letting the reader contemplate which is tragedy is bigger. While on the other hand, Bradbury’s version of “There Will Come Soft Rains” conveys only a strong sense of tragedy.
When the time changes from being written in italics to regular print it signifies a turning point in the story. Bradbury’s description of the fire towards the end of the story suggest that in fact there are, at some point, limits to technology. He says, “In the last instant, under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time….” In the end technology could not prevail against nature most powerful force, fire.
Rain is a very significant element of one of the main characters in the story, nature. It is heard throughout the story, beginning when the voice box sings “rain, rain, go away”. Rain is important because it is the one thing that is able to save the house from the fire. The house relied on technology, and tried using the water system but it didn’t work. There was no natural rain that night, and ironically the house had been singing for it to go away earlier that morning.