Hunter Kingsley

Period 1

September 11, 2019

Unit 1 Paragraph

Ray Bradbury draws on and transforms Sara Teasdale’s poem “There Will Come Soft

Rains” to give meaning to his story of the same name. Firstly, Ray Bradbury’s story is about a

house that has automated functions using technology. The house is performing tasks for

humans that are supposed to live there, but the humans aren’t there. The presumed reason

that the humans aren’t there is because of an atomic bomb. This can be inferred because “the

house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes,” (Bradbury 88). There is also a section that

says, “the entire west face of the house was black, save for five spaces,” which are then

described to be the silhouettes of a family of five (Bradbury 88).These clues highly suggest that

a bomb of some type wiped out the city. In the middle of the story, the automated house reads

the poem There Will Come Soft Rains. The theme of the poem is if humans were to disappear of

the face of the earth, nature would not notice, and move on without us. The line that states

“not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly,” helps support this

theme. At the end of the story, there is a storm that sends a branch through the kitchen

window. This causes a chain of events that set, “the room ablaze in an instant,” (Bradbury 91).

Eventually, the house burns down with only one wall standing alone. It utters the date before

breaking along with the rest of the house. Bradbury chose to use that specific poem in his story

because it builds upon the theme in the poem. While the message in the poem was that nature
will still be here after humans die, the theme is Bradbury’s story is technology doesn’t have

feelings or care about humans. It only does strictly what is was told to do and will still do that

even with humans are not there.