Almost stereotypically post-apocalyptic, this story talks about an automated house, that continues to function after it’s owners have died in a nuclear blast. Through this, Bradbury has shed light on the role technology could play in humanity’s future. Throughout the story, the house is personified. It tries to wake its owners up “as if it were afraid” they wouldn’t, and protects itself from the outside with “a mechanical paranoia”. When it is catching fire, it acts erratically, in “maniac confusion”, as if it were panicking. Although, the house in this moment of vulnerability continues to “read poetry” with a “sublime disregard for the situation”; at the end of the day technology is still mechanical and programmed and, lacking emotion, could never replace humanity.
To a reader, these partial acts of sentience portray the house as intelligent; rather, as independent of its owners. It makes food, washes dishes, cleans and sets reminders for a family that isn’t there. Bradbury comments on the futility of such a situation, comparing it to a religion that continues “senselessly, uselessly” after it’s gods have departed;…show more content… At the heart of the story is a poem of the same name, by Sara Teasdale, which talks of a peaceful future where nature is indifferent to the annihilation of the human race. The line that spring would “scarcely know that we were gone”, plays out in Bradbury’s story where mankind has “perished utterly”. Here the only ‘nature’ that seems to survive are animated projections and robotic mice. Whereas the poem has a merry AABB rhyme scheme, using mellow words such as “soft” or “feathery”, Bradbury’s story is made darker, using words such as “empty”, “withered”, and “afraid”. Perhaps this is in effort to warn the reader of the consequences of destructive human