There Will Come Soft Rains By Ray Bradbury

The short story, “There will come soft rains,” by Ray Bradbury, tells the story of a futuristic house that was not destroyed in a nuclear fallout. The house, being completely automated, continues doing it’s everyday tasks, including cooking meals, cleaning dishes, or setting up a bath. But there is nobody there. The house, being unaware of this, continues doing it’s duties until it eventually is destroyed when a tree crashes into the kitchen and starts a fire. Bradbury uses symbols, irony, and repetition to show the houses desire to stay alive. Symbols are apparent throughout, “There Will come soft rains.” One of the most important symbols is the dog. The dog serves as a symbol for all life. Before the dog arrives at the door, Bradbury chooses to tell us how nothing was able to touch the house. Birds would fly by, animals would go to the door, but the house would shout at them to go away. Then, the house recognizes the dog’s whine and lets it into the house. After the dog frantically runs around the house, looking for any sign of life, it collapses and dies, presumably to radiation poisoning, after realizing the house is empty. The house then takes the dog's corpse and burns it in the incinerator. The dog acts as a symbol of all life. First, it renters the house, then it dies, and the house moves on

Bradbury uses irony in the form of this poem. When the voice asks what poem the man would like to read, and it is greeted by nothing, it selects the man’s preset favorite poem, called there will come soft rains. The poem tells the story of a world after mankind has perished in war, and how all life lives on as if nothing ever happened. The poem tells this when it says “as Mother Nature opened her eyes, she would scarcely know we were gone.” The house reading this poem is ironic because even though all human life is gone, the hosue continues to “live” as if it