In “There Will Come Soft Rains,” there are no human beings still alive in the story. As a matter of fact, the only things we see of them are their “painted” shadows on the wall after a nuclear war. Supposedly, a nuclear blast will imprint the shadow of someone against a wall if they are in a certain radius of the explosion. This phenomenon was first seen with the dropping of the bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The only thing still alive (and not for long) is the family dog that somehow survived the catastrophe. He comes to the door wanting to be let in and fed but, unfortunately, dies. The robot mice sweep him right up, and he is incinerated in the basement.
It is ironic that the technology that controlled the family’s life and provided them with an easy lifestyle is the very same technology that killed them. The technology lived on without the family until the very end when fire destroys the last house standing in the city.
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