EVERY lesson has a reflection in the last 5 minutes. WHAT - SO WHAT - NOW WHAT?

All Summer In a Day

By Ray Bradbury

"Ready?"

"Ready."

"Now?"

"Soon."

"Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?"

"Look, look; see for yourself!"

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained.

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. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

"It’s stopping, it’s stopping!"

"Yes, yes!" Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain.

They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it: I think the sun is a flower,That blooms for just one hour. That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

"Aw, you didn’t write that!" protested one of the boys. "I did," said Margot. "I did."

"William!" said the teacher. But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows.

“Where’s teacher?"

"She’ll be back."

"She’d better hurry, we’ll miss it!"

They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. 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.

"What’re you looking at?" said William.

Margot said nothing.

"Speak when you’re spoken to."

He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself be moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows. And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, 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.

But Margot remembered.

"It’s like a penny," she said once, eyes closed.

"No it’s not!" the children cried.

"It’s like a fire," she said, "in the stove."

"You’re lying, you don’t remember !" cried the children.

But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn’t touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away. 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, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. 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.

"Get away !" The boy gave her another push. "What’re you waiting for?"

Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes.

"Well, don’t wait around here!" cried the boy savagely. "You won’t see nothing!"

Her lips moved.

"Nothing!" he cried. "It was all a joke, wasn’t it?" He turned to the other children. "Nothing’s happening today. Is it?"

They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads.

"Nothing, nothing!"

"Oh, but," Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun…"

"All a joke !" said the boy, and seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let’s put her in a closet before the teacher comes!"

"No," said Margot, falling back.

They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived.

"Ready, children ?" She glanced at her watch.

"Yes !" said everyone.

"Are we all here?"

"Yes!"

The rain slacked still more.

They crowded to the huge door.

The rain stopped.

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a beautiful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them.

The sun came out.

It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling into the springtime.

"Now, don’t go too far," called the teacher after them. "You’ve only two hours, you know. You wouldn’t want to get caught out!" But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms.

"Oh, it’s better than the sun lamps, isn’t it?"

"Much, much better!"

They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of fleshlike weed, wavering, flowering in this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon.

The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hideand-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces; they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running.

And then -

In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed.

Everyone stopped.

The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand.

"Oh, look, look," she said, trembling.

They came slowly to look at her opened palm.

In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop. She began to cry, looking at it. They glanced quietly at the sun.

"Oh. Oh."

A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cold around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away.

A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightning struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash.

They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever.

"Will it be seven more years ?"

"Yes. Seven."

Then one of them gave a little cry.

"Margot !"

"What ?"

"She’s still in the closet where we locked her."

"Margot."

They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other’s glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.

"Margot."

One of the girls said, "Well… ?"

No one moved.

"Go on," whispered the girl.

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. They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.

Behind the closet door was only silence. They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

Background Knowledge

Author

Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920. By the time he was eleven, he had already begun writing his own stories on butcher paper. His family moved fairly frequently, and he graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. He had no further formal education, but he studied on his own at the library and continued to write. For several years, he earned money by selling newspapers on street corners. His first published story was “Hollerbochen’s Dilemma,” which appeared in 1938 in Imagination!, a magazine for amateur writers. In 1942 he was published in Weird Tales, the legendary pulp science-fiction magazine that fostered such luminaries of the genre as H. P. Lovecraft. Bradbury honed his sci-fi sensibility writing for popular television shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. He also ventured into screenplay writing (he wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1953 film Moby Dick). His book The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, established his reputation as a leading American writer of science fiction.

Historical Context

Comprehension Questions

Please respond to the following in complete sentences.

1. What is the weather like on Venus? How long has it been like this?

2. What is supposed to happen on this particular day?

3. Why are the other children unable to remember the sun?

4. How does Margot feel about the weather on Venus?

5a. What makes Margot different from the other children? Why?

b. Why does this difference cause the other children to dislike Margot?

6a. What do the other children do to Margot?

b. What do the children do when the sun comes out?

7. Why do the children do what they do to Margot?

8a. What do the other children remember when it starts to rain again?

b. How do they feel when it starts to rain again?

Alternate Questions

Why do you think Margot acts the way she does—why doesn’t she play with her classmates, for example? Why does she react so strongly to the shower?
Why do you think the other children mistreat Margot? Why do they refuse to believe what she says? Why do you think the boy says, “Nothing’s happening today”? What does this show about why people bully others?
What do you think happens after the story ends?
. What do you think the sun might symbolise in this story? It represents more than just the actual, physical sun. What long-term effect do you think never seeing the sun might have on people? What do you think the story suggests about advanced technology that might allow us to do things like live on Venus?
What do you think are the themes and messages of the story? Think about the situation the people in Venus are in, as well as the consequences of it, and consider what happens to Margot in the story as well.

Themes

Jealousy and Isolation

“All Summer in a Day” tells the story of a group of children ostracizing and bullying a child who doesn’t fit in. Margot, who moved to Venus from Earth several years before, has real memories of the sun, unlike her classmates who have seen only Venus’ constant rain. As sunlight is the experience that the children on Venus cherish the most, Margot becomes a scapegoat for the children’s frustration and longing. Their jealousy of her experiences leads them to a profound act of cruelty, which suggests that jealousy and deprivation, rather than outright hatred, are the engines of bullying.

The children are jealous of Margot because, while they can only speculate about what sunlight is like, Margot spent her early childhood on Earth. As the classroom prepares for Venus’ short period of sunlight, Margot writes a clever poem about the sun. Because only Margot remembers the sun, her poem and recollections are the most true to life. In order to undercut this advantage, William tries to discredit Margot, saying, “Aw, you didn’t write that!” Similarly, when Margot recalls that the sun is “like a penny,” the other children, led by William, say that she is wrong or lying. They act as if they have more knowledge of the sun than her, when the opposite is true.

Just before the sun is set to come out, the children, again led by William, torment Margot by telling her that the predictions are wrong and the sun won’t appear. Then, they shut her in a closet to keep her from going outside—while the sun appears, she will be trapped in the dark. In this way, they deprive her of experiencing the sun, just as they felt they had been deprived. The nature of these specific acts of bullying shows that the children are motivated by jealousy. Margot has been able to experience what they desired but were denied, and now they have the power to turn the tables. Bullying, therefore, is an expression of the children’s own sense of misfortune, as well as a twisted way attempt to fix a perceived injustice.

Though their cruelty is reprehensible, their jealousy is understandable—not only did Margot live on Earth for years before moving to Venus, but she also may return one day, as her family can afford the “thousands of dollars” it would cost to move back. Therefore, Margot has opportunities that the others don’t, and perhaps her sour attitude towards Venus doubly wounds them in light of her privilege. As the children prepare for the sun to come out, Margot shows off her superior memory of the sun, telling the other children that the sun is “like a penny,” or “a fire…in the stove.” To the other children, this is a reminder that Margot’s experiences have given her special knowledge of the sun, which they can only imagine. In addition, Margot refuses to participate when the other children try to include her in activities like playing tag and singing. In fact, when William begins to bully Margot, she is intentionally standing apart from the other children. Margot makes it clear that she thinks life on Earth is better than life on Venus, and that making friends with the children there is pointless. Margot has a “waiting silence” and a “possible future,” so it is clear to the other children that she does not value life on Venus and, unlike them, she has the option to leave. In both her behavior and her circumstances, Margot shows that she comes from a better world and that she is uninterested in Venus or its inhabitants. In this way, the children are made repeatedly aware that they are suffering from the sun’s absence, and, unlike Margot, can do little about it. In the face of this powerlessness and inequity, the children direct their frustration towards Margot.

Although Margot’s behavior intensifies the children’s animosity towards her, their decision to lock her in the closet is more about the children’s own anxieties and desires than it is a retaliation against Margot’s personality. This is clear because, in the moments leading up to Margot’s relegation to the closet, she is simply standing quietly, looking out the window with the rest of the children. William and the others attempt to taunt her, but she remains unengaged even when physically pushed. Their actions, then, seem broadly cathartic rather than directed at Margot herself. The children who inflict great harm on Margot do so not because they personally hate her, but because of a very real sense of deprivation. Margot is unjustly tormented for having seen the sun, but the children are also intensely aware that she has access to the thing that is most scarce and desirable to them. Ultimately, the story shows that even extremely cruel bullying is driven by more complicated motives than hatred alone.

The Power of Nature

“All Summer in a Day” imagines a world in which humans have left Earth for Venus, an inhospitable planet where they must live completely indoors and can only dream about the pleasures of being outside. This estrangement from nature changes humanity, both physically and emotionally, by draining people of color, vitality, and even empathy. In this way, Bradbury shows how central nature—and particularly the sun —is to humankind.

The strongest example of this is the story’s protagonist, Margot, a little girl who moved to Venus from Earth several years before and is therefore alone among her classmates in remembering the sun. Bradbury’s descriptions of Margot reveal that her life on Venus has left her much diminished from her days on Earth. For example, Bradbury’s physical description of Margot suggests that Venus has weakened her body—Margot is “frail” and her color has drained away to the extent that she looks like “an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.” She also seems so demoralized by her surroundings that she has become uninterested in the typical pleasures of children. “If they tagged her and ran,” Bradbury writes, “she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows.” Therefore, Bradbury depicts Margot as a child so heartbroken and diminished by the loss of nature that she has become nearly inhuman.

While Margot reels from the loss of nature, her classmates have never even known the sun. Their upbringing on Venus, in an environment hostile to human life, seems to have shaped them to be meaner than their counterparts on Earth. The constant rains and lightning are dangerous and depressing, and the lush vegetation—which Bradbury describes as a “nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of fleshlike weed”—is the color of “rubber and ash,” making even the natural elements of Venus seem dead and hazardous. Because of this, and because the sun comes out only once every seven years, humans must live in underground tunnels to survive. Just like this environment, Margot’s classmates behave hostilely towards her. They taunt her, mock her, and they ultimately leave her locked in a closet during the only two hours of sunlight they will see for seven years—an act that is particularly cruel since Margot longs so fervently for the sun. In this way, Bradbury strongly ties the children’s behavior to their environment. After the sunlight has passed, the children remember Margot and seem, for the first time, remorseful for how they treated her. Seeing the sun has either imbued them with a warmth and empathy they had lacked beforehand, or their experience of seeing and losing sunlight has made them finally sympathetic to her grief.

The power that nature and sunlight have over all of the children suggests that humanity is, at least in part, defined by its relationship to nature. Without the sun, human beings in this story do not seem whole—they lack physical vitality and emotional warmth. Perhaps in recognition of the sun’s centrality to human life, the people in the story practically worship it, making the sun an object of fascination and longing. This dystopian fetishization of nature by people who are acutely affected by its absence can be read as a parable of technological progress and urbanization. Published in 1954, the story appeared in the midst of the postwar boom of suburban development and aerospace technology. In light of this, Bradbury seems to suggest that human beings are better off living in landscapes that keep them alongside the natural world, and that technologies that estrange people from nature—like the rocket that transported earthlings to Venus—can diminish humanity rather than further its progress. By depicting both characters who long for the nature of Earth and characters who suffer from never having known it, Bradbury suggests that contact with nature and the sun are centrally important to human health and wellbeing. Without this contact, humans seem to lose an important piece of themselves.

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