Literary Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”
American Nightmare and Personification with Bradbury
In Bradbury’s “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains,” Bradbury perfectly exemplifies the theme of the American Nightmare by telling his readers of an empty personified home that carries on daily activities as if the family which once occupied it still lived there. The McClellan house’s technology is very advanced as it includes much of the smart home technology many are familiar with today yet also has the ability to cook and clean, which serve as key aspects to the personification of this house while also adding more emphasis to the theme.
Bradbury’s use of personification in this story is crucial in developing the theme of the American Dream/Nightmare, and readers can spot this connection in the first line of the story when Bradbury tells the readers that “the voice-clock sang,” (20) both personifying the house and providing the first piece of information to reveal the house’s advanced technology. Bradbury later introduces quite possibly the most amazing smart kitchen technology ever dreamt of when he describes how “the stove [gives] a hissing sigh” (20) before laying out a full breakfast feast for its former family, even with no family in sight. Readers can be in even more awe of this technology while the kitchen cleans up the mess left behind from the breakfast that was never touched, “an aluminum wedge [scrapes the food] into the sink, where the hot water [whirls it] down a metal throat which [digests] and [flushes]” (Bradbury 20) the food away. This line in the seventh paragraph is one of the most specific uses of personification throughout this story because Bradbury anthropomorphizes the house through the use of very human-centric verbs. Words such as “digestion”, “sigh”, and “sang” are very animalistic actions, making the house itself the main character of the narrative in the absence of any humans. Bradbury characterizes the house as a living thing through his careful selection of diction, which allows the reader to further empathize with it during its eventual demise.
Towards the end of the first page, Bradbury begins to paint the scene outside the house for his readers as he describes “a city of rubble and ashes… a ruined city” (20), which gives off “a radioactive glow” (20) at night. This helps the readers understand that Bradbury’s story “[addresses] the central fear of its time—nuclear holocaust” (Everman), while simultaneously displaying the Nightmare theme particularly well because it shows readers the connection between the advanced technology that made the smart house possible and the advanced technology that makes nuclear warfare possible (Everman). Even in this destroyed city, with no humans in sight, the technology that undoubtedly contributed to their fall lives on; “among the ruins, one wall stood alone” (Bradbury 23) as the voice continued, “today is August 5th, 2026” (Bradbury 23) over and over again; it’s hard to imagine a more haunting scene than the one Bradbury illustrates for his audience here.
Towards the end of this story “the house [begins] to die” (Bradbury 22) as a tree falls through the window, causing cleaning solvent to spill over the stove, creating a huge fire in the house. Bradbury also personifies this fire as it begins “licking, eating, under the kitchen door” (22) before the house begins trying to save itself and “wind [blows] and [sucks] upon the fire” (22). The fire did not quit though, as it flew up the stairs, “[feeding] upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh” (Bradbury 23). When the fire had made its way into the nursery, the animals on the wall were personified as well; “blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant, steaming river” (Bradbury 23). This part is very engaging for the reader because he has used the most outrageous personification in every area of the home, so much so, that it would now be unfair to refer to the house as a singular character when there are so many moving parts that work together to give the house all of the different functions that the readers become familiar with in Bradbury’s story.
Bradbury has a unique way of painting a picture for his audience, and this can be seen throughout this story because of the way he is able to personify the house while also adding depth to the theme of the American Dream/Nightmare and giving his readers a clear image of the house and its surroundings. The personification of the house is in direct correlation to the fear of the technology that makes nuclear warfare possible, and the story reveals that humans are the reason any of this nightmare became a possibility in the first place because they created the technology that ultimately led to their fall.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Read, vol. 61, no. 3, Oct. 2011, pp. 20–23. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=mih&AN=67066413&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Everman, Welch, D. “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains: Overview.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=edsglr&AN=edsglr.1420000985&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 1 May 2021.
