Making Meanings
There Will Come Soft Rains
Reading Check
a. As the story opens, what clues suggest that all is not well in the McClellan household?
b. What has happened to the family?
c. Explain why there is still activity in the house. Who or what controls the house?
d. Describe how the house is finally destroyed.
First Thoughts
1. Complete any two of these statements:
• As I read “There Will Come Soft Rains,” I thought of . . .
• This story interested/did not interest me because . . .
• One question I have about the story is . . .
Shaping Interpretations
2. Review the story by listing, in chronological order, the main events that took place in the house on August 4, 2026. Now, look at the little digital clocks that indicate the hours. How long did it take for the house to be destroyed?
3. Go back to the text, and find three places in the story where the house, the fire, and the appliances are personified—that is, described as if they were living beings, even human.
4. Bradbury describes the house as “an altar with ten thousand attendants”. Who are the “gods” who are worshiped? What has happened to these “gods”?
Connecting with the Text
5. Do you think there will ever be automated houses like the one in the story? Explain why or why not. How would you feel about living in one?
6. What do you think are the benefits and drawbacks of technology.
7. How old will you be and what do you think you’ll be doing in the year 2026? How do you expect the world of 2026 to compare with the one Bradbury envisions?
Extending the Text
8. What warnings is Bradbury trying to deliver through his story? What do you think should be done to ensure that your generation’s future is different from what is described in the story?
Choices: Building Your Portfolio
Writer’s Notebook
1. Collecting Ideas for a Character Analysis
This story is remarkable because it doesn’t have any human characters in it. Yet think of that house and the evil fire that ruins it. Take notes on one of them as a “character.” What kind of person is the fire portrayed as? Take notes on the words used to describe the fire and on what it does. What kind of person is the house? How is it described? What does it do as its life is threatened and then destroyed?
Creative Writing
2. Dear Diary
Write a diary entry dated August 4, 2025, from the point of view of one of the McClellans—the mother, the father, the son, or the daughter. What happens to you on this day, one year before the events of the story? What are your hopes and fears?
Technology/Critical Thinking
3. The Cutting Edge
Invent a new toy or laborsaving appliance for Bradbury’s world of 2026. Make a drawing of your invention, and attach a written explanation of what it does and how it works.
| The Dog Wash Program is a machine with five cycles to make dog washing an easier chore. The eye protectors, flea shampoo, shampooing massage, dog
positioners, and drying towel are the five cycles the dog goes through under running water to make your job much easier and clean the dog better.
—Kimberly S. |
Grammar Link: Mini-Lesson
Don’t or Doesn’t?
The contractions don’t and doesn’t should agree with their subjects.
1. Use don’t with plural subjects and with the pronouns I and you.
EXAMPLES Science fiction stories don’t always take place in the future.
Don’t you wish your house would clean up after you?
2. Use doesn’t with other singular subjects.
EXAMPLES Mrs. McClellan doesn’t hear her poetry reading that day.
It doesn’t matter to the house that the dog is hungry.
If you’re unsure whether to use don’t or doesn’t in a sentence, try substituting the phrases
do not and does not for the contraction. For example, she does not
is correct; she do not isn’t.
Try It Out
Copy the following sentences, filling in each blank with the correct contraction, don’t or doesn’t.
1. The McClellans _______ live in the house anymore.
2. It seems as though the house _______ realize they are gone.
3. It _______ know how to stop cleaning, cooking, and reading poetry.
4. The amazing gadgets still work, but they _______ serve any purpose.
5. Bradbury seems to be saying that it _______ make sense to care more about technology than about human life.
Vocabulary: How to Own a Word
| WORD BANK | Analogies |
| paranoia tremulous oblivious sublime |
An analogy is a word puzzle with two pairs of words that have the same relationship. They might have the same meaning or an opposite meaning, or they might share some other relationship, such as cause and effect or whole to part. For example, in the analogy
“Start is to stop as hate is to _____,” start
and stop are opposites, so the word that will show the same relationship in the second pair is
love, the opposite of hate.
Complete each sentence by filling in the blank with the word that fits best from the Word Bank. Use each word only once. 1. Weary is to tired as shaky is to _______. |
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