Robert Peltier is an English instructor at Trinity College and has published works of both fiction and nonfiction. In the following essay, he discusses the subversion of nature in Bradbury's story.

Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" contains echoes of a theme that has reverberated through the literature of the last 175 years, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark to Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, more recently in the myriad novels, stories, and films about various forms of technology that have turned on their masters: Man is not God and only gets into trouble when he tries to play God.

Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein creates life itself, but the creature he creates is condemned to a monstrous and soulless existence, finally turning to murder when the good doctor, having seen that he is not an all-knowing God and fearing the (further...