The house cooks breakfast, cleans up, sets up for bridge, and reads this poem. Despite that, life in the house continues as if there were still inhabitants. Outside of the house, the neighborhood is in ruins, and no one appears to be living in the house or in the vicinity of it.

The poem seems to have predicted exactly what has happened - no one minds that mankind has perished. This poem is read by the house shortly before it begins to die and is eventually destroyed. Would scarcely know that we were gone.' 'There Will Come Soft Rains,' p. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,Īnd Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire Īnd not one will know of the war, not one 'There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,Īnd swallows circling with their shimmering sound They are equally dependent on the house, and this is the first time they acknowledge that in the story. When George says this to Lydia, it represents the breakdown in inter-family communication - they think their children are insufferable, as well as their inability to interfere as parents and maintain their personal identities. The children have become increasingly adverse to any sort of change in the status of the house or any parenting decision made by George and Lydia.

George wants to shut the house off, but Lydia is worried about the children's reaction. They are troubled by the fact that the nursery will no longer change to other settings - it remains on the hot African savannah and the feasting lions. George Hadley says this to his wife over dinner while they wait for their children to return from the fair. They're spoiled and we're spoiled.' George Hadley in 'The Veldt,' p. They come and go when they like they treat us as if we were offspring. 'Who was it said, 'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally'! We've never lifted a hand.

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