There Will Come Soft Rain Personification Essay

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A house Is Not A Home: The limitation of Technology through Personification In the May 6th, 1950 issue of Collier’s magazine, a short story first appeared titled “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” written by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury would later include this story into his book The Martian Chronicle’s, a collection of short science fiction pieces. The story takes place in a dystopian future in the City of Allendale, California. There, a house owned by the McClellan family is the only thing that remains standing after a horrific occurrence (a presumed nuclear explosion) destroys the rest of the city. The house is a sophisticated “smart” house, where everything is automated. Everyday tasks are completed without human intervention; this is convenient since there are no humans to be found. The house takes care of the family that once lived there, even though they are gone. In the end, the house meets its demise and burns down when a tree crashes through the window starting a fire that spreads from the kitchen. The story is set 76 years into the future and gives a sense of wonder. The house has it’s own voice and personality. It is a technological marvel and more advanced than the average house today. Bradbury uses personification at first glance to …show more content…

The very first sentence, “In the living room the voice-clock sang…” the house sings to the uninhabited room. Many aspects of the house have characteristics that relate to human action. Bradbury does this to connect the reader to the house. If the house is more like a human then the reader is more likely to have empathy for it than if it was portrayed as just a building that completed tasks. There are no actual living humans in the story so the main character is arguably the house. As the story progresses, the house is a record of the family, a deeper insight into who they were. This insight shows that technology controlled their

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