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.
Symbols & Motifs
Animals
Animals, both literal and figurative, are present throughout the story. The first animals introduced are the robot mice that clean the house. They are joined by rats, which have a similar function. In the nursery, robotic bugs crawl along the floor, and the crystal walls are filled with images of “yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, and lilac panthers” (251).
While the house is full of robots and images in the shape of animals, its doors and windows are tightly barred against living animals such as foxes, cats, and sparrows. There is a difference in the way the house treats these wild or feral animals compared to the artificial “animals” that reside within. The dog exists at the border of the two, able to enter the house but unable to partake in or benefit from its functions without humans present. It symbolizes humanity’s failure to coexist with nature.
Cleaning
The house cleans itself obsessively, announcing the first appearance of the robotic cleaning mice at 9:15 a.m. The mice and rats appear regularly thereafter, sweeping up after the dog when it enters the house and later joining the fight against the fire. Likewise, the stove promptly cleans after itself when the breakfast it made goes uneaten for over an hour.
The walls release the mice and rats if so much as a “leaf fragment [blows] under the door” (250). The cleaning process is extreme from start to finish, as the rats destroy this detritus by dropping it into an incinerator.
Cleaning, along with the absurd precision and regularity in the house’s cleaning schedule, is a motif representing control and order. The obsession with which the house cleans itself is mirrored by the frequency with which it notes the time of day. Like timekeeping, the motif of cleaning reveals the house’s obsession with orderliness.
Fire
While the fire that destroys the house almost qualifies as a sentient character, fire in general plays an important symbolic role. Fire is the focus of the narrative’s main conflict (order against chaos) and symbolizes both sides of the issue.
Inside the house, fire is safely contained within a box: the incinerator, which “sat like evil Baal” (250) in the corner of the house’s cellar. Paired with the narrator’s description of the house as an “altar” (249) to humanity, this reference to an “evil” pagan God suggests that the house’s cleaning is almost an act of ritual sacrifice. As the cleaning mice bring leaves and other bits of detritus that blow in from outside, the fire in the incinerator symbolizes the sacrifice of chaos to order.
On the other hand, fire represents chaos. The fire that destroys the house symbolizes the forces of nature and their eventual destruction of order. While the fire in the house is turned into a tool of order by the incinerator, the fire that destroys the house is both free and “clever” in its destructive capacity.
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By Ray Bradbury
