20 pages • 40 minutes read
Ray BradburyAll Summer In A Day
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Sun
The sun is a common but multifaceted symbol in literature; the role it plays in sustaining life associates it with ideas of vitality and rebirth, while its light and warmth evoke knowledge and love or kindness, respectively. Bradbury draws on this tradition in “All Summer in a Day,” depicting the sun as both literally and figuratively life-giving. As soon as the children step out into the sun, they become more animated and energetic, as though strengthened by its heat and light: “[T]he jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the summer-time” (Paragraph 55). Just as important as this physical transformation, however, is the emotional or spiritual awakening the children experience while playing in the sun; they return with a more complete understanding of the potential joy and richness of life and with increased empathy for Margot, whose longing for the sun they now understand.
Color
Color—or the lack of it—is a prominent motif in “All Summer in a Day.” Without sunlight, life on Venus is quite literally colorless; Margot, for instance, is “washed out” and pale from years of living indoors. The natural world has suffered similarly; the jungle, though abundant, is a grayish white color that Bradbury suggests is both unnatural and unhealthy, comparing it to “rubber and ash” (Paragraph 60). The implication is that there is something artificial and even death-like about the colonists’ lives, which, because of the constant downpour, they spend almost entirely in underground bunkers.
When the sun briefly comes out, it temporarily adds color to this otherwise bleak existence: “[The sun] was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color” (Paragraph 55). The sight invigorates the children, who in turn try to capture some of the sun’s color for themselves by allowing it to burn their skin. Symbolically, these actions encapsulate the episode’s effect on the children, whose existence gains nuance and meaning as a result of their experience in the sun, even after the rain once again turns their world gray.
Plants
References to Venus’s forests appear throughout “All Summer in a Day,” while other kinds of plant life (flowers, weeds, etc.) often feature metaphorically; as the story opens, for example, the children are “pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun” (Paragraph 7). In this instance, the motif hints at humanity’s dependence on nature, implying that the children need sunlight much as a plant does. It is notable, however, that Venus’s jungle does manage to grow without sunlight. In fact, the jungle, Bradbury writes, “never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it” (Paragraph 60), but it grows in a way that seems unhealthy: It is grayish-white in color, and it only flowers during the sun’s brief emergence. Likewise, the children who have grown up on Venus seem physically strong, but the character traits that have most flourished in the planet’s unique environment—intolerance, envy—aren’t healthy ones.
The Closet
The closet in which the children lock Margot symbolizes the restricted and impoverished nature of their own lives, as well as their jealous desire to subject Margot to the same kind of existence. The constant storms on Venus impose limitations on the colonists’ lives, forcing them to spend most of their time underground. It is therefore noteworthy that when the children imprison Margot, they do so by forcing her deeper into the ground and into progressively smaller spaces: “[They] bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door” (Paragraph 45).
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