Ray+Bradbury

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By: Ray Bradbury
Summary: All Summer is a day is a short science fiction story about a classroom of kids, the children of the rocket men and women, who live on Venus. In this world that they live in, it rains and storms everyday. Every seven years, the rain stops and the sun peaks out from behind the clouds for two hours. Among these children is a little girl named Margot who is different than the other kids. She remembers what the sun looks and feels like. Margot doesn't really talk or interact with the other children. On this specific day, the day the sun was predicted to shine, she kept staring out the window waiting for the rain to stop while the other children were playing around the classroom. While their teacher was gone, the children locked Margot in a closet in their underground school for talking about the sun. When their teacher came back to take them outside, the children all forgot about Margot and went out to explore the jungle like terrain and enjoy the sunshine and rain-free weather. That is until it started raining again and they had to go back inside their underground safehaven. The children then, not making eye contact, shamefully walked back to their classroom and let Margot out of the closet.

Excerpts: “Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. “ This excerpt shows that Margot is different from the other students. She stands alone and does not take part in their games or conversations. All the rain has taken a toll on her. She remembers when she used to live in Ohio what the sun looked and felt like. The other children, who have lived on Venus their whole life, resent her for this and think she makes the stuff up about the sun. “They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries.” This part of the story comes immediately after the children lock Margot in the closet while their teacher is gone. The pounding on the door is from Margot trying to get out because she wants to see the sun. The children thought it was all a joke and the sun wasn’t going to come out, but Margot knew it would. To get her to stop talking about it they put her in the closet and left. “They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightning on their faces, blue and terrible.” This part of the story comes at the end after the children have been outside playing in the sun. For two hours they ran around and explored the outside world rain-free, not thinking about Margot. When the rain started again and they had to go in, that was when one child mentioned Margot. After that they couldn’t look at each other. The one person that truly wanted to see the sun didn’t get too. They felt bad and that could be sensed in the way they walked back to the closet and let Margot out.

Reflection: I liked All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury because it is science fiction. I have read other stories by him and enjoy his writing about futuristic themes. All Summer in a Day provoked thoughts in me about what it would be like to live in a world that pretty much never had sunlight. I also, thought about what it was like for Margot who wanted to see the sun so bad, but never got too. My thinking then went beyond the story to remembering times when I wanted something so badly, but couldn’t have it. Some of these real life experiences weren’t as desperate as Margot wanting to see the sun, and some of them were. Eventually I got past not being able to get what I wanted really badly, but at the time many emotions filled y head because I felt it was life or death if I didn’t get it or do it. For Margot, not being able to see the sun affected her deeply. Based on the descriptions of her behavior and thinking in the text, I could feel what she must be feeling when the kids locked her in the closet. I felt angry when they were mean to her and sympathetic when they locked her in the closet. I could also, feel the shame of the kids when they let her out of the closet. The way Ray Bradbury writes, it is easy to feel the character’s emotions and connect with them. Also, his writing is usually about futuristic times, which in some cases, is an interest to me. At times during this short story, it felt like it drug on, but they quickly passed and were replaced with more exciting events.