Rain, Rain, Go Away

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1959

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Themes

The Illusion of Perfection and Control

An illusion of perfection typifies this time period, when the US experienced an unprecedented economic and industrial boom, and though it wasn’t a frequent topic for Asimov, it does relate to his Humanist interests in the nature of people’s values and the question of what gives life meaning. Families in the 1950s were part of the Age of Television and the rise of national advertising that televised media and radio allowed. Families would have watched series like The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, and Leave It To Beaver that presented idealized families: Generally, the husband worked, the wife took care of the home, the children were well-behaved, and everyone made it look easy. Commercial breaks presented ads about the newest stovetop, automobile, or cola that would give people greater control over their lives.

“Rain, Rain, Go Away” demonstrates the influence of this context throughout the narrative. In the first scene, after “vanishing into the kitchen [...] Lillian came back into the living room with a patter of high heels” (128). This presents two key ideas about the role of the “perfect” wife in this setting: both that her place is in the kitchen, and that she should always look her best, wearing heels even if all she does is sit home and look at her neighbors through the venetian blinds. The fact that she moves with a “patter” further enforces the impression that she moves delicately, perfectly. Her fascination with material possessions and appearances is further developed by her impression of the Sakkaros after visiting their home. When she says, “I have never seen any place so spotless” (129) and enjoys a conversation marked by “neat give-and-take on impersonal subjects” (130), it’s the appearance of perfection that gains her approval.

Likewise, it’s the illusion of control that seals the Sakkaros’ fate: “It was a beautiful day at Murphy’s Park; [...] Even Mr. Sakkaro [...] seemed to have no fault to find [with it]” (131). By all measures and metrics, the family could imagine themselves safe: The barometer, the radio, the newspapers, even firsthand observation all suggest no rain. This illusion comes undone, however, with the arrival of a sudden “hard to predict [...] local thunderstorm” (133).

The story’s conclusion makes it clear that illusions can be dangerous, even fatal. When the Sakkaros’ perfect faces blur, shrink, and shrivel, they give the impression of being little more than a child’s painting, the imagining of what a perfect family must look like. Likewise, the allusion to the nursery rhyme in the story’s title suggests that wishing for perfection is futile, even childish. This theme emphasizes the satirical critique of society’s desire for candy-pink stoves, perfect blue skies, and spacious front yards, all of which are only a facade that hides what’s really happening behind the venetian blinds. Appearances and illusions are further developed by the motif of seeing and watching.

Curiosity and Judgment

As with the first theme, the petty curiosity that motivates Mrs. Wright to march up to her new neighbors’ doorstep in hopes of getting “the Cook’s tour” (129) of their home becomes something more sinister. Her strong curiosity about the neighbors, revealed through her dialogue, is her defining characteristic and drives the plot, and her judgment of them creates this curiosity in the first place.

While she’s impressed by the neatness of their house, their “tremendous lawn,” and their “quiet and well-behaved” son (127), the primary reason she’s determined to learn more about the family is the sense that they’re “odd” (128). Thus, her curiosity and her judgment are inseparable from one another. This connection between the two becomes explicit when she says, “I’ll simply have to make her acquaintance,” only to comment in her next line of dialogue, “And now she’ll be going in. Honestly” (129). This demonstrates that although she admits to not knowing anything about Mrs. Sakkaro, Mrs. Wright deems her behavior ridiculous.

Although curiosity and judgment initially appear only in Mrs. Wright, they later infect Mr. Wright as well. At first focused more on the baseball game than the details of their neighbors’ lives, he seems to pay little attention to his wife as she goes on about the fact that the Sakkaros are always focused on the sky. When she scolds him for not relaying Tommie’s comment that the Sakkaros are from Arizona, his judgment seems initially more directed toward her: “I thought you could just manage to drag out a normal existence even if you never found out” (128).

However, this changes during their outing to Murphy’s Park. When she returns from buying the admission tickets for the boys, she finds him looking “gloomy” (131) at having been able to learn very little. He then takes the lead on judging their neighbors, commenting that their love of cotton candy might make him “turn green and sicken on the spot” and that after cotton candy the hamburger he offered to buy “ought to be a feast” (132). When she, in contrast, tries to excuse their fascination with sweets, the Wrights’ differing levels of judgment heighten the characterization of both individuals.

Her curiosity might be a sign of boredom, as if she truly has nothing better to do than stare out the window at her neighbors and organize play dates just to grill them for information. However, like his curiosity, it’s rooted in her anxiety that they might be living a better, different, or more interesting life. Thus, this theme relates closely to the Wrights’ fear of the unknown.

Fear of the Unknown

Prejudices, “othering,” and scapegoating are prevalent themes in Asimov’s more famous works. In “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” the Wrights’ possibly unjustified fear of their neighbors and the Sakkaros’ demonstrably justified fear of unexpected rain provide the core of each family’s motivations. In addition, these fears underpin the story’s other central themes.

Fear of the unknown dominated 1950s society and politics. This was the era of the “Red Scare” and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s claims that he had a list of people serving in government who were members of the Communist Party, potentially spying for the Soviet Union. It had been only 15 years since the US sent Japanese Americans to concentration camps and would be several more years before Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which did away with quotas for allowing people into the country based on nationality. US citizens were encouraged to keep up their guard and alert authorities to any kind of suspicious behavior.

Given this context, the anxiety in the Wright’s dialogue regarding their lack of information about the Sakkaro family’s origins becomes clearer. When Mrs. Wright frets that “I don’t even know what Mr. Sakkaro does” (127) or why Mrs. Sakkaro might be “staring at that cloud” (129), it demonstrates her fear of the unknown. By 1950s standards in the US, a man’s occupation, a woman’s interests, and a family’s place of origin were measures of their quality and character. These anxieties are partially relieved when the Wrights think the family might be from Arizona but reemerge stronger than before when it becomes clear they aren’t. The name Sakkaro also contributes to the Wrights’ growing sense of unease—they can’t place this name (a pun on “saccharine,” representing something artificial but superficially sweet). When the Wrights attempt to label their neighbors as being of “Spanish-ancestry” or as “Japanese” (131-32), they’re trying to alleviate their own fears while at the same time insisting that their neighbors, who have “some kind of accent” (131), are different from them in an important, possibly dangerous way.

The Sakkaros’ fears, foreshadowed throughout the story and symbolized by the aneroid barometer, prove less ambiguous, but the family also demonstrates the fear of the unknown. If they can always know when it will rain, they can keep themselves safe. However, knowledge is useless when circumstances prevent them from taking measures to protect themselves: Seeing that it’s about to rain doesn’t prevent them getting soaked and melting into “sticky-wet heaps” (133). Had the Sakkaros feared the Wrights as much as the rain, they might have been safe at home. This highlights the irony that the Wrights’ own fearing and “othering” of the Sakkaros gets them killed because they end up taking them to the amusement park on a day when a sudden storm hits the area.

Asimov’s story suggests that fear of the unknown might be justified, but that it’s also a useless and damaging emotion. People can spend hours of energy trying to know more about the impact that people or circumstances will have on their lives, but the idea that they have any control over this outcome is mostly an illusion.