The specter of nuclear annihilation dominates the story, but the narrative is about an automated house and its battle with nature. The fate of the house suggests a central theme of the text: humans try to master nature with technology, but nature will win in the end. This theme is revealed through the text’s central conflict between the natural world and the remnants of human technology. This conflict—technology against nature—diverges from more common conflict structures such as “human against technology” or “human against nature.”

Though the main conflict is between two nonhuman entities, “There Will Come Soft Rains” has hints of more common literary conflicts. Humanity has become a victim of its technological progress (human against technology) through a nuclear war that took place at some point before the story begins. Likewise, the story suggests an implicit conflict of human against nature in which the high-tech house acts as a final representation of humanity holding out against the hostile elements of nature.

However, humanity is no more than a ghost lurking in the background. Without any living humans in the story, the house and nature act as the text’s main characters. The house with its automated processes engages in a literal conflict with the forces of nature, and the narrator describes this conflict as if it were a fight between two people.