theme essay all summer in a day

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘All Summer in a Day’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘All Summer in a Day’ is a 1954 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). The story is set on Venus, where the sun only comes out once every seven years for a couple of hours; the rest of the time, the sun is hidden behind clouds and rains fall constantly.

‘All Summer in a Day’ is about a group of schoolchildren who have grown up on Venus, the sons and daughters of ‘rocket men and women’ who came to the planet from Earth, as the children prepare to experience the first ‘summer’ on Venus that they can remember.

Many of Ray Bradbury’s stories are allegorical, and carry other meanings which lurk beneath the surface of the story, and ‘All Summer in a Day’ is one of these. Before we come to the analysis, however, it might be helpful to recap the story’s plot.

Plot summary

The story takes place on Venus, where ‘summer’ occurs for just a couple of hours every seven years. The story is set on one such day, and centres on a group of nine-year-old children as they excitedly wait for the clouds to clear and for the sun to appear in the sky.

One of the children, a pale and thin girl named Margot, is treated differently by the other children. Unlike them, she can remember the sun, because she grew up on Earth and came to Venus five years ago, when she was four. The other children were born on Venus and were too young when the sun last appeared, seven years ago, to remember it. Margot writes a poem describing the sun as a flower, but one of the other children, a boy named William, doesn’t believe she wrote it.

While they are watching the rainstorms gradually abating and waiting for the appearance of the sun, the children talk to each other. When Margot tells them the sun is like a penny, they once again disbelieve her, with one boy, William, claiming that it’s all a practical joke and he doesn’t believe the sun will come out. Turning on her, the children lock Margot in a closet at the end of the tunnel. When the sun comes out, the children are let out to play among the jungle, enjoying their hour or so in the sunshine, savouring this rare moment of sunlight and taking everything in.

The hour soon passes, and one of the girls feels a raindrop fall on her hand, and they realise that the sun will soon be going in again for another seven years. It’s only when they get back indoors and the rains start falling again that they remember they locked Margot in the closet. They go and let her out.

‘All Summer in a Day’ depicts a world without sun: Venus is a bleached, ashen, pale world because everything is deprived of the sunlight. Bradbury sketches in this rain-soaked world effectively, making us as readers share the excitement of the children as they wait for the sun to make its rare appearance.

The symbolism of ‘All Summer in a Day’ is subtle, but, like the sun in the story and its effects on the children, goes to work on us as readers in ways which we may not fully realise. One of the things which can take us by surprise upon reading the story is the swift change of character in the children, especially their ringleader, William. Before the sun appears, they are sullen and irritable, and clearly resent Margot because she can remember what the sun looks and feels like.

But when they return from their brief time among the sunshine, they appear to be filled with remorse for depriving her of the opportunity to share in the experience by locking her in the closet.

The implication of this ending, then, is that the sun – and, by extension, being able to go out among nature and appreciate it – is good for us as human beings. The constant rainstorms on Venus have deprived the children of this experience.

Bradbury was, at heart, a Romantic in the Wordsworthian sense, who believed that we need fresh air and open countryside and a close relationship with nature, and his stories are full of warnings about what can go wrong when human beings come to depend too much on technology and are deprived of this bond with the natural world and the open air. (See ‘The Pedestrian’ for a different, if related, work on this theme.)

As soon as the children have been exposed to the healing powers of nature for just a short while, they appear to recover their conscience and empathy, and regret depriving Margot of the experience they have had – the last time they will have it as children, since they will be sixteen and on the brink of adulthood when the sun next comes out on Venus.

Many of Ray Bradbury’s stories are allegories of a sort. But is ‘All Summer in a Day’ an allegory? Unlike many of Bradbury’s stories of the early 1950s it’s not easy to discern a Cold War allegory in ‘All Summer in a Day’, but the story is clearly meant to be about more than an imagined scenario in which children on Venus experience the sun for the first time.

Among other interpretations, we might focus on the way in which Margot (whose French-derived name, complete with its silent final letter, even suggests a foreign quality among the other, supposedly English-speaking children) is ‘othered’ by her peers because she was a later arrival to the planet. The children have never really accepted her because she is different from them, and because, unlike them, she wasn’t born on Venus but emigrated to there from Earth when she was four and her parents moved there.

Although it would perhaps be reductive to distil the ‘moral’ of Bradbury’s story to the pithy summary, ‘if people get out there and commune with the natural world, it will make them more compassionate towards others, especially those who are different from them’, this message is clearly present in the story. Bradbury, like many other authors of science-fiction stories, uses the setting of the story, a different planet, both to conceal and reveal his story’s tacit commentary on immigration and how an ‘in-group’ refuses to accept a perceived ‘outsider’ because they are not native to that particular ‘land’.

But the rains of the story are as important as the sun, in this respect. The weather of Venus is a constant, predictable and regular as clockwork, and nothing can be done to change it. But the effects of the inevitable rainstorms are all too predictable, leading the children to be restricted in their movement and their play. This breeds resentment and, one suspects, boredom.

In other words, Bradbury refuses to point the finger at William and the other children for treating Margot differently, even though we can see their behaviour towards her is wrong. He highlights how a life of miserable weather, day in day out, is bound to take its toll on the inhabitants of Venus and colour their view of the world, their mood, and their behaviour.

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All Summer In A Day

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Summary: “all summer in a day”.

“All Summer in a Day” is a short story by American speculative fiction writer Ray Bradbury. It first appeared in a 1954 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and has since been anthologized numerous times and even adapted as a short television film.

Set on a recently colonized Venus, the story begins with a crowd of nine-year-olds peering out their classroom window to see whether the rain is stopping; on Venus, the sun only appears for one hour in between seven-year intervals of rain. In the days leading up to this event, the children have learned about the sun in school, but because most of them were born on Venus, they have no actual memories of sunlight. The one exception is a girl named Margot , who moved to Venus with her parents at age four and whose parents are considering moving back there soon, although it will be expensive to do so. She both remembers and desperately misses the sun and has shown little interest in interacting with her classmates: “When the class sang songs about life and happiness and games, her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and summer did her lips move, as she watched the drenched windows” (Paragraph 28).

Margot’s unhappiness combined with her classmates’ jealousy make her the target of bullying. On this particular day, the children vent their nervous excitement on Margot; a boy named William taunts her, asking what she’s waiting for and claiming that the scientists’ forecast is “all a joke” (Paragraph 40). Whipped into a frenzy, the children push Margot into a closet and lock her inside as she cries, pleads, and beats on the door to be let out. The teacher then returns and takes the class outside, where the rain is finally stopping.

The sun’s emergence has an immediate effect on the children: They joyfully shed their coats as they play and bask in the sunlight. After an hour, however, the weather begins to change; a girl catches a raindrop on her palm and begins crying, and the children hurry back inside as the storms once again approach. As they sadly reflect that they won’t see the sun for another seven years, they remember that Margot is still in the closet . Now ashamed of their earlier actions, they return to the closet, where Margot is now silent, and unlock the door.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — All Summer in a Day — Jealousy: Providing Theme in “All Summer in a Day”

Jealousy: Providing Theme in "All Summer in a Day"

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Published: Apr 30, 2021

Words: 533 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

The essay discusses Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" and its themes, particularly the consequences of jealousy and the challenge of accepting change. The story is set on Venus, where the sun rarely shines, and the narrative revolves around Margot, a newcomer from Earth who has vivid memories of the sun. The children on Venus, driven by jealousy, mistreat Margot for her unique knowledge and the possibility of returning to Earth. The essay highlights how jealousy can be harmful, as Margot's classmates push her into a closet, depriving her of experiencing the sun's brief appearance. The author explores the theme through tone and dialogue, emphasizing the emotional impact of jealousy on both Margot and her peers. Additionally, there's a suggestion that the story reflects the societal reactions to immigrants and their struggles in new environments.

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All Summer in a Day

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“All Summer in a Day” takes place on the planet Venus, a generation after the first colonists from Earth arrived there. Venus has a peculiar climate: every seven years, the sun comes out for just two hours. The rest of the time, it rains—all day, every day. The planet is covered with thick jungles and unruly weeds , perpetually caught in a cycle of growth and destruction. Humans live underground in a network of tunnels, eagerly awaiting the very brief summer.

When the story opens, a group of nine-year-old children are gathered excitedly by the window of their underground classroom. After seven long years, today is the day that scientists predict the sun will make its brief appearance; indeed, the rain seems to be slowing. One child, Margot, stands apart. Unlike most of the children, Margot lived on Earth until five years ago, so while they all speculate about what the sun is like, Margot can actually remember quite well. Margot has not taken well to her new home on Venus: she is frail, quiet, and pale, as if “the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair.” Lately, she has begun to panic at the touch of water.

As the two-hour summer approaches, the schoolchildren read and write short stories about the sun. Margot finds herself the object of teasing when William , a boy in her class, tries to antagonize her by claiming she didn’t write the poem she shared with the class. This is typical torment for Margot: the other children tend to tease her or avoid her, because they envy her childhood on Earth and the fact that her parents may even spend thousands of dollars to move her back there. To some extent, Margot seems to have brought this isolation upon herself, because she refuses to participate in games or songs unless they relate to the sun. For Margot, life on Venus is all but unbearable and the sun is all-important, and she makes no secret of these feelings.

On the day the sun is set to appear, these tensions are close to a boiling point. While their teacher is briefly out of the room, William pushes and taunts Margot, but she doesn’t respond, continuing to stare out the classroom window. Angered, William tells Margot that the sun won’t come out after all. She’s unsure whether to believe him, but clearly alarmed. Soon, the other children join William in taunting Margot about the sun, the thing she most cares about. William leads the other children in grabbing Margot and pushing her into a closet. She struggles and cries, but they lock the door, smile at one another, and return to the classroom. They seem to forget about the incident immediately.

Just as the children return to the classroom, the rain slows even more and, finally, stops. They crowd eagerly by the classroom door. In the sudden roaring silence and stillness, the sun comes out, flooding the sky and jungle with radiant light. The jungle is revealed as a tumultuous tangle of “flesh-like weed,” resembling a “nest of octopi” bleached a sickly ash grey by years of relative darkness.

The children rush outside and peel off their jackets, reveling in the warmth of the sun. It is far better than they even imagined it would be. They run, laugh, and yell, staring at the sun and trying to savor every joyful moment. But all too soon, a girl begins to wail—she has caught a single raindrop in her palm. Immediately sobered, the children walk and then run back to the underground classroom as the sky darkens and the torrential rain recommences. It seems somehow louder and more painful than before, and the seven year distance between the present and the next glimpse of sunshine seems incomprehensibly long.

Just as these somber feelings overtake the children, they suddenly remember Margot, still locked in the closet. They glance at each other, guilty and chastened. Slowly, against the backdrop of the terrible rain, they walk to the now-silent closet. They let Margot out.

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