Your question certainly goes to the heart of this
excellent story and what Bradbury has achieved by it. Note how at the beginning the
house is presented as a complete organism that ironically does not need humans at all to
keep on functioning. Robotic clocks carry on announcing the wake-up call, mechanised
kitchens keep on churning out meals and the house robots clean and maintain it every day
according to a strict schedule:
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice
darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal.
They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap,
sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their
burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was
clean.
Bradbury thus
emphasises the state of technological sophistication that mankind has reached in this
future world. However, it is incredibly noteworthy that this story is probably one of
the few I have ever read that does not have any human characters in it. The minds that
designed such incredible technology are all gone, the only momento of their existence is
the "five spots of paint" on the wall marking the members of the family whose house is
the focus of the story.
In addition, let us not forget the
massive irony of the title of the story. The poem that gives the story its title is all
about the ephemeral nature of humanity, and how we are temporary in the large scheme of
things, and how, when we do eventually die out, Nature will "scarcely know that we were
gone."
Thus, through irony, Bradbury points out that
technology can be dangerous in making us think more of ourselves than we should, and
ignoring our fragile and transient state as beings on a planet. All such technology is
very laudable, but let us not forget that the same minds that made robotic cleaning mice
also made atom bombs capable of wiping ourselves out so
completely.
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