Throughout the story "There Will Come Soft Rains," Ray Bradbury includes certain details that create a desolate, sad setting, including a description of what happens to Allendale, California after a nuclear strike. After beginning the story with a description of a mechanical house that is going on about its business despite no humans being present, the narrator pans out and shows the house from a third-person point of view:
"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."
After showing that the entire city is destroyed, the narrator zooms back onto the house, focusing on its outside where the shadows of the former occupants have been burned into the side.
Both images, the demolished city and the shadows of the home's deceased occupants, contribute to this story's larger ideas that the mechanical things we create are meaningless if we destroy ourselves.
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