52 pages • 1 hour read
Ray BradburyThere Will Come Soft Rains
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
The House
Identifying characters in a story like “There Will Come Soft Rains” might seem difficult as there are no living humans. Despite this lack, the story has several prominent characters. The most obvious is the house, which, with its multiple automated inhabitants, acts as the main character.
Even in the first line, the house is described as an emotional being, announcing that it is time to get up “almost as if it were afraid that nobody would” (248). A variety of other emotional descriptions pile up. The narrator describes the house as being careful and preoccupied. In one instance, the cleaning rats from the walls become “angry” (250).
The house is personified in other ways. Some of its automated residents are described as having “faces” (254) and in the attic is a “brain” (254). The house is also capable of making decisions and taking action. When it receives no response regarding a poem preference, it chooses the poem alluded to in the story’s title.
Although personified in a variety of ways, the house does not appear to be fully conscious. Its residents, while they can experience emotions and carry out complex tasks, are strictly divided in terms of their capabilities. The house is undone by its own ordered, automated structure. Faced with destruction by fire, the stove in the kitchen can do nothing but increase its cooking speed. As the house is destroyed, the voices fall into a disarray of “maniac confusion” (255).
The Fire
The fire that destroys the house is personified to an equal degree, acting as the text’s antagonist. The house is in conflict with nature throughout the story; thus, nature might also be listed as a character. However, fire is the representative of the natural world that acts most clearly as a character.
Comparing the house to the fire reveals their fundamental differences. Whereas the house is rigid and regular in its routine, the fire is adaptable and “clever.” When the house releases a chemical flame retardant, the narrator notes that the fire had already “sent” flames outside the house to destroy the attic in which the extinguishers are located. Elsewhere, descriptions treat the fire more as a person than a chemical reaction. The fire does not simply “burn” the belongings of the house’s former residents; it “[feeds] upon them […] tenderly crisping the canvases” of valuable paintings (254).
The clever fire, oddly tender in its consumption of the house, makes for a well-characterized antagonist. Arguably, the fire becomes more sympathetic when treated as a character. Measured against the needless, suffocating order imposed by voice-clock, the destruction by the fire seems almost a relief. This distinction is made clearer by the contrast between the negative imagery (evil gods) associated with the house and the positive descriptors the narrator uses for the fire. The chaos of nature, even in its destructive capacity, seems more palatable than the stultifying order of the house.
The Family
Although there are no living humans in the story, the deceased inhabitants of the house shape the plot, setting, and themes. The family of four—a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl—are present only as silhouettes of paint on an explosion-charred wall outside their home.
The family seems to represent an idyllic version of 1950s domesticity: the nuclear family with a father mowing the lawn and a mother picking flowers. On one hand, they seem average, suggesting the technologies found in the house are standard in 2057. Cleaning robots and walls that project fantastic environments are run-of-the-mill appliances in this version of 2057.
On the other hand, the former inhabitants of the house are shrouded in mystery. The narrator suggests they own paintings by famous artists like Picasso and Matisse. The family may indeed be well-to-do or perhaps even fabulously wealthy. Alternatively, perhaps such things are more widely available in 2057. Without human characters to speak and act for themselves, it is impossible to know what their world was like.
In the Collier’s version, the opening passage tells the reader that the family is happy in their house. However, this passage is excised from the revised Martian Chronicles version, leaving readers to draw conclusions about living in such a house. The highly regimented, omnipresent nature of the house’s technology has dystopian undertones.
The Dog
One final character is the dog. After describing how carefully the house keeps out wild animals, the narrator notes that there is an exception. A dog appears on the porch, and the house recognizes its whine. The house lets the dog in, but it runs around the house disoriented and confused, barking at each door. When its former owners fail to appear, the dog realizes, “as the house realized, that only silence was here” (250). This comparison further personifies the house; like the dog, the house can absorb new information.
The dog then comes upon the kitchen, where it is driven into a frenzy by the smell of food. The dog is so excited by the scent that it dies outside the kitchen door. Eventually, the cleaning rats come to dispose of it in the incinerator.
Unlike the birds, foxes, and feral cats the house is careful to keep out, the dog is allowed in. This suggests a further dimension to the theme of nature and control. The dog acts as a stand-in for the elements of the natural world over which humans attempted to exercise control. Loyal to the last, the dog returns home even after its family was incinerated. This refuge of comfort and domesticity has become a trap. Without humans, the dog cannot access the food it relies upon. This suggests a corollary theme: Nature is better off without the intervention of humans.
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