Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rain

Stories can be written with the purpose of making the reader think about the world and the characters that the author has created, There Will Come Soft Rains is no different. In the short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury helps the reader understand the story by using tone and diction as well as imagery. Within the first paragraph the reader can get a hint of what the story is going to be like, “The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!” (Bradbury 1). The house said to be repeating all of what it is saying into the emptiness, even though it still prepares the breakfast for its residents as well as listing what is happening today, the day August 4, 2026.
It goes to describe pictures/paint of a family; a man mowing the lawn, a woman picking flowers, and two children playing ball together, as well as saying that the paint of the family remains on the walls but everything else in covered in a thin layer of charcoal, the diction that Bradbury uses indicates that the house keeps everything but that wall clean almost as a remembrance to the family (Bradbury 1). A dog eventually comes up to the house “shivering” “ The dog, once large and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores” (Bradbury 2), Bradbury is using imagery with the words shivering, and bone to give emphasis that the dog has not been cared for. The house recognized the voice of the dog and allows the dog inside, where it brung dirt and mud and “angry mice” follow behind it cleaning the mess it makes. When the dog goes around the house it finds nothing, “only silence was here”. The dog eventually goes to the kitchen smelling food and “The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to
"Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite…” (Bradbury 2). Throughout the entire day the house has not gotten a reply and the reader has seen no indication that anyone lives in the house. The poem at the end reads “Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.” (Bradbury 3), which can indicate that not only is this family gone but the entire human race could be gone as well. Bradbury uses “mankind perished utterly” in the story to finally reveal that the house has been working like it normally does but has yet to realize that nobody is coming back. The house eventually catches fire and dies, but not before it tries to save itself (Bradbury 3). The tone throughout the story was very mysterious; with no one answering the house, along with the starved dog that died on the floor, and the quietness when the house asked which poem would like to be read. Bradbury was able to make the reader question what was truly going on throughout the entirety of the story by the way that he used tone, diction, and