Thursday, November 25, 2010

What are three facts for "All Summer in a Day"?

Fact 1:  It has been raining on Venus for seven years. 


Can you imagine living in a place where the sun never comes out?  That is the situation on Venus in Bradbury’s science fiction story “All Summer in a Day.”  It has been raining for so long that it seems like it will never stop. 



It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. 



The people of Venus know that the sun will soon come out.  As long as it has been raining, they have missed the sun.  Most of them are transplants from Earth.  The adults remember the sun, but the children do not. 


Fact 2:  The children in Margot’s class do not remember ever seeing the sun. 


Most of the children in Margot’s class are nine years old, so they were toddlers when the sun last came out.  Naturally they do not remember it.  Due to this fact, they are obsessed with the sun.  They can’t wait for it to come out, so they can see it for the first time. 



[They] had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. 



In school, they study the sun.  They write poems about it, and stories.  Their teacher encourages their enthusiasm.  She doesn’t seem to realize that one of the children does not fit in. 


Fact 3:  The children bully Margot because she came from Earth and does not fit in. 


Margot does not play games with the other children.  She avoids them, and they bully her.  She is a frail, timid girl.  The children of Venus are jealous of her because she came from Earth and has seen the sun.  She also has a chance to go back.  



There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to Earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so .... And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future. 



On the day the sun comes out, the children lock Margot in a closet as a gag.  Then the sun emerges, and they forget about her.  When they realize that she missed the sun, they are ashamed at what they have done.

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