Foreshadowing In There Will Come Soft Rains

Chima Enwere

Professor Sam Zahran

2014FA.ENG.112.0003

23 September 2014

Literary Analysis Although brief, the short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” has a vast amount of literary elements to examine. By examining Bradbury’s usage of symbolism, personification/anthropomorphism, and irony, we can grasp a better understanding of what he wanted readers to learn and appreciate this work of literature.

There are many symbols that have much significance in this short story. First, we have the robots/robotic mice. These creature scurried the floors of the McClellan household to clean up after the busy family. These robots represents man’s attempt to be a god which happened to fail miserably when Bradbury writes “The house was like an altar with

We see some more foreshadowing and symbolism in the story when "The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.... the house began to die" (Bradbury). The music playing and the chairs facing the walls (as an act of respect) symbolized an atmosphere of a funeral which foreshadowed the "death" of the house. Suddenly, nature's fury physically attacks the house: "The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window" (Bradbury). We see personification usage by the way the house defended itself as if it were an actual person. Nevertheless, after putting up a fight, the house succumbed to the fire. Some legitimate arguments could be made that future scientific and technological inventions will one day triumph nature since man/technology was not completely defeated in the story. According to the story, one could imply that technology is improving and developing since nature can no longer completely defeat man/technology. One can reason that this story begins man’s quest/attempt to become triumph over nature. This mystery could spark an interest in science fiction scholars of a potential of a sequel to this story. The plot of the sequel could be man/technology’s approach to defeat