There Will Come Soft Rains Theme

You love the latest iPhone, MacBook, camera, television, nuclear weapons. No? Not nuclear weapons? Well, since the ending of WWII in 1945, it is estimated that the United States, humans, have produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads. That’s at least 909 nuclear warheads a year! That also means at least 2 a day! Do you want an event like Hiroshima and Nagasaki every day? Well, of course not, nobody wants an event like that to ever happen again. Ray Bradburry references nuclear weapons and atomic bombs in his dystopian short story “There will come soft rains” by starting the short story with just a house standing all alone in an area filled with rubble, wreckage, and destruction in the state of California in The United States of America. After

But as soon as the dog entered the house Bradburry phrases that, “The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud.” (pg 2 stan 19). The dog then goes throughout the house looking for someone but no one was there. Then the dog sniffed the air and was scratching at the kitchen door until Bradburry states that “The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died.” (pg 2 stan 22). Bradburry uses the phrase “gone to bone coerced with sores” and the words “and died” to indicate that because of the nuclear weapons that have been dropped can cause radiation poisoning harming or even killing everyone and anything who gets even the slightest bit of exposure. The dog becomes covered in sores and becomes just skin and bones, and eventually dies due to what can only be inferred as radiation in the house. But the house only has this radiation inside because a nuclear bomb must have been dropped near this house at some point. This being an emotional conflict of a dog

The house in this dystopian short story has supposedly been doing a good job at keeping its peace for some time. Apparently, the house had also shut all its doors and windows in order for protection which was on the grounds of mechanical paranoia. It also quivers at each sound it hears which sets up Bradburry to express that, “No, not even a bird must touch the house! The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued, senselessly, uselessly.” (pg 1 stan 15-16). The phrase “The house was an altar” utilized by Bradburry is a metaphor that more or less means that the house is a sacred place and no one and nothing should touch it because it’s an “altar”. So, the house is paranoid and doesn’t want anything to touch it and if something does it dies. But why does something die when it touches this house making it an “altar”? Well this dystopian short story was published in 1950 after the dropping of the 2 atomic bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki in Japan by the USA in 1945, and The cold war between the USSR and the USA also just starting in 1947. Being partially driven by the mass production of atomic weapons and having the