The End is Near

In Ray Bradbury's short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains," a single house in Allendale, California is left standing after a nuclear bomb is dropped on the city and destroys everyone and everything. The house doesn't realize that the family, or "the gods," of the house are no longer around, and so it struggles to continue with its daily routines of providing for the family; making breakfast, sending them off to work and school, drawing an evening bath, etc. After the animated nursery reads an eerie poem by Sara Teasdale titled "There Will Come Soft Rains," a storm outside causes a tree to burst through the kitchen and a fire rages through the house. Though it does its best to put out and combat the fire, the house eventually loses the battle and the fire destroys the house, leaving one solitary wall that continues to announce the day.

I love Bradbury's use of strong imagery in this story in order to help the reader visualize what is happening in the house. For example, 

The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west side where the house has been burned evenly free of its white paint (1).

Bradbury is appealing to the senses of sound and sight here, using words like "whirled" and "running down the charred west side" you can see a sprinkler shooting water on one side of the house that has been burned by something.
This story's protagonist is the house. There is so much personification to give the house human-like characteristics. For example:

How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which boarded on a mechanical paranoia (2).

This reveals to us, the readers, that the house is afraid since no one is responding to it, and that is something it is not used to. It is protecting itself from any harm.

This is such an awesome story and the message behind it is so true, even today; We must be careful with how much technology we allow ourselves because we, man, will destroy ourselves, our race, if not. And nature will not care because she was here before we were, and she will be here long after we are gone. The strong imagery and the personification of the house and fire make this story a delight to read, and one of my all time favorite short stories.