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These mice, which are part of the house’s machinery, display the house’s dark side. Like the clock, they seem innocent enough at first, and they are quite useful, since they are able to reach hidden dust that would be difficult and unpleasant to clean by hand. However, when the sickly dog returns home after the nuclear explosion, the mice seem annoyed to have to deal with a mess, rather than relieved at the return of one of the house’s occupants. They clean up after the dog without compassion, and when the dog dies, they hurry to clean up after it, not even pausing to mourn. The robot mice show that there is a limit to how humane a machine can be.
Robot Mice Quotes in There Will Come Soft Rains
The There Will Come Soft Rains quotes below are all either spoken by Robot Mice or refer to Robot Mice. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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There Will Come Soft Rains Quotes
The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.
Related Characters:
The Dog, Robot Mice, The House
Related Symbols:
The Natural World
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
223
Explanation and Analysis:
Because the house permits the dog to enter, the reader infers that this was a family pet. The animal was once large and healthy but now, due to radiation and hunger, it has been reduced to a shell of its former self. The dog’s return gives the house an opportunity in the story to demonstrate its character. In a famous, similar scene in The Odyssey, a dog welcomes a weary traveler back to his home. Will the house be like the famous dog, Argos, who faithfully welcomed its owner, Odysseus, upon his return after twenty years at sea?
The behavior of the mice answers this question firmly in the negative. The robot mice are rough with the poor animal. They are more concerned with accomplishing a task (cleaning) than they are with the animal itself. Thus, even though this technologically savvy house looks and acts like an intelligent life form, it is limited by its lack of compassion. The mice have a singular focus: to preserve order. That means banishing mud, since it is part of the natural world that the house is trying to shut out.
In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
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Related Literary Devices:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Robot Mice Character Timeline in There Will Come Soft Rains
The timeline below shows where the character Robot Mice appears in There Will Come Soft Rains. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
There Will Come Soft Rains
...hot water and come out “twinkling dry.” The clock announces 9:15, and a hoard of robot mice emerge from nooks and crannies of the house to deeply clean. They suck up dust...
(full context)
The robot mice return to clean up after the dog, “angry at the inconvenience.” They always appear at...
(full context)
The clock announces that it is 2:00. “Delicately sensing decay at last,” the robot mice emerge and buzz around the dog’s body “as softly as blown gray leaves in an...
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...water. From 6:00 to 8:00, the dinner dishes move “like magic tricks” and a hearth fire starts in the study. Opposite the fire, the house lights a cigar that is “smoking,...
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...a tree branch through a kitchen window. Cleaning solvent shatters over the stove, and a fire starts instantaneously. The house begins to shout, “Fire!” with many of its machine voices chiming...
(full context)
The house attempts “to save itself” by shutting its doors and containing the fire. The robot mice double as firemen, shooting water from built-in tubes until their personal supply...
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The fire continues its rampage. It climbs the stairs and feeds “upon Picassos and Matisses in the...
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The robot mice make their way into the attic and attack the fire from trap doors in the ceiling, spraying a green chemical. This momentarily causes the fire...
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The fire delves deeper into the house. It “felt the clothes” in the closets. The pain of...
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The many voices of the house continue to cry out until the fire consumes them one by one. One plays music, another announces the time, still others scream....
(full context)
