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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“There Will Come Soft Rains” is set in Allendale, California, a fictional suburban locale that has likely been scorched by an atomic bomb. The McClellans' home is the only building left in what seems to be a nuclear aftermath, and Bradbury’s description of it is equal parts ghastly and haunting:
The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
Placed in 2057 amid the ruins of human civilization, the story’s choice of time period provides it the freedom to imagine. Humans have created semi-sentient houses and appliances that can attend to every human need but have destroyed themselves in the process. We learn that irresponsible technology use has caused destruction on unprecedented scales.
At the same time, Bradbury only heightens the shock of this futurism through his use of more readily familiar tropes. “There Will Come Soft Rains” conjures up the suburban neighborhood—a symbol of comfortable affluence and consumerism—that leads us to identify with this fictional setting. The story therefore combines its grim speculation with the mainstays of daily life: sunnyside-up eggs still get fried and martinis continue to materialize in this radiation-contaminated world, as though to supply a dimension of frightening realism.
The result of both these choices is a fictional world that seems simultaneously mundane but also twisted beyond recognition. It is familiar at parts and uncomfortably tragic, and this sense of familiarity adds a personal urgency to the author's forecasts. Through his choice of setting, Bradbury suggests that this cautionary tale may be in fact realer, and truer, than mere fiction.
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