Friday, May 9, 2014

What are the important themes in "There Will Come Soft Rains"?

The main theme of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is a critique of technology. The story focuses on a house that does everything for the family that lives in it, from waking them up in the morning and preparing breakfast to later setting up their card table. This might look appealing, except that we soon discover the family and the civilization around the house have been destroyed by what appears to have been a nuclear war. Technology, we find, was not really a servant of humans, but an out-of-control, destructive force. Bradbury is warning us to be careful about an unthinking embrace of technology.
Second, the story shows nature triumphing over technology. The house quickly reverts to a state of nature as it burns to the ground. A second theme of the story is that nature is, in its quiet way, more powerful than humankind's inventions.

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