There Will Come Soft Rains

The story personifies several nonhuman characters by giving them human characteristics. The personification of the house and, to a lesser extent, nature is one of the story’s most readily apparent literary devices. Indeed, at one point, the story even compares the house directly to a human, saying that the house has an “old maidenly preoccupation” with keeping itself clean. This instance of personification is particularly revealing in its irony: it employs the metaphor of “mechanical paranoia” to describe a house that is literally mechanical.

This shows the extent to which the house is personified and treated as a character. Though its concern with self-protection is almost mechanical (or machine-like) in nature, the narrator chooses to describe it as an old maid rather than a machine. Elsewhere, the story attributes human qualities such as cleverness to the fire that destroys the house, and robotic mice become “angry” when the dog tracks mud into the house (250).

Exposition, or how the narrator reveals the details of the story, is a key element of “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The narrator tells the story from a third-person omniscient perspective, which allows the narrator to provide descriptive details even though there are no living humans in the story. The third-person, omniscient narration also allows the story to move through a scene without following a particular character. Eventually, however, the narrative attaches itself to the dog and then the fire. Omniscient narration turns toward limited as the story narrows focus and builds to its conclusion.

The central theme of scientific progress and its limits is illustrated by imagery that ranges from the wondrous to the horrific. Imagery plays a particularly important role in the narrator’s description of the children’s nursery. The images of “color and fantasy” evoke an immersive world created by “hidden films” that play through walls of glass (251). The imagery is of jungle scenes: a “yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion […] the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of fresh jungle rain” (251). The effect of this imagery is almost one of virtual reality (a topic that plays out more explicitly in a similar nursery from another Bradbury story, “The Veldt”).

Elsewhere, imagery underscores the dangers and limits of scientific progress. Perhaps the central image of the text shows what remains of the people who once lived in the house. The narrator describes how “the entire west face of the house was black, save for five places.” These spots are “the silhouette[s] in paint” of a man, woman, boy, and girl engaged in the last activities of their lives (248).