Q) How does the post apocalyptic setting accentuate the theme of the story?
A) Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rain” is a story that essentially encapsulates the self-destructive characteristic of humans and the triumph of nature over all other entities. By establishing a post apocalyptic setting, Ray Bradbury institutes the diverse themes of futility of technology, self-destruction and dependency, that propel the story towards the message it eventually communicates.
Ray Bradbury creates a setting of a house where loneliness pervades. The auditory image in “[the clock] repeating its sound into the emptiness” and the phrases “no doors slammed” and “no carpets took the soft thread of rubber heels” signify the lack of human presence in the house. This isolation is accentuated in “the house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes” which is pivotal in establishing the post-apocalyptic context. The absence of humans is significant in bringing in the theme of futility, as the electronic devices are carrying out their functions to no avail, as there is no one to benefit from these favours. By setting the story in a world destroyed by war, futility is also implied towards the relentless development of technology, because all the advancements could not prevent humanity’s obliteration, for which they themselves are to blame. This introduces the theme of self-destruction in the story.
Self-destruction is persistently insinuated in the story. The poem narrated in the story describes the unaffected state of nature “if mankind perished utterly” due to war. The post-apocalyptic and post-war setting in the story corroborates this as even in the absence of humans the sun still rises, the rain still pours and the birds still flutter. Furthermore, the the fact that the multitude of devices continue to work without human presence or stimulation show that humans advanced in technology to such an extent that is surpassed their own horizon. However, eventually even the house that surmounted the nuclear war is perished by a tree, which initiates the themes of dependency of all entities on nature.
Nature is portrayed as a paramount entity in this story, and the fact that it is extant in a post apocalyptic world where everything else is doomed and the fact that it eventually possesses the ability to destroy a house that survived a nuclear war signifies nature’s triumph over humanity. Hence the post-apocalyptic setting crucially underlines the message Ray Bradbury wished to communicate using these themes in “There Will Come Soft Rain”
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