All Summer In A Day

“She knew that 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 […] and their dreams were gone.” 

Because the children were toddlers the last time the sun emerged, they have no direct and conscious knowledge of it; instead, they have vague bodily impressions of sunlight, and the story calls even these into question by describing the children as thinking they remember rather than simply remembering. What’s more, any lingering memories the children do have pale in comparison to the constant daily reality of rainfall and therefore only emerge when the children are sleeping.

“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.’” 

The sun is an animating force in “All Summer in a Day,” generating not only life but also more symbolic forms of vitality, including rich, evocative, and figurative language. The teacher’s assignment makes sense given this context, but because the children have no firsthand knowledge of the sun to draw on, they struggle with it, and William even accuses Margot of plagiarizing the above lines.

“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.”

Margot’s appearance speaks to the harmful effects life on Venus has had not only on her, but on all the children. Margot’s pallor suggests ill health, and it is true that a lack of sunlight can cause depression, sleep disturbances, vitamin D deficiency, and other physical and psychological symptoms. Her colorlessness, however, also reflects a deeper and more general problem: how to find joy, wonder, and purpose in life when an important source of meaning—nature as it exists on Earth—is absent. This problem is especially acute for the other children, although they themselves don’t initially realize it; as the first generation born on Venus, they’ve lived their entire lives cut off from the natural world and consequently lack emotional depth and maturity.

“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.” 

The tension between Margot and the other children stems not only from the latter’s resentment, but also from Margot’s self-isolation. In fact, as this passage demonstrates, the two feed off one another; Margot’s obvious disinterest in the children’s games causes them to distance themselves from her, perhaps because they believe she sees herself as superior. The description of the underground city is also noteworthy. The fact that sound “echoes” in the tunnels implies that they’re largely empty and therefore hints at the sterility and hollowness of the settlers’ lives on Venus.

“‘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.”

The above passage illustrates the dynamics driving the children’s bullying of Margot. Unable to bear the idea that something they have no access to really is as wonderful as Margot claims, the children simply deny that her descriptions of the sun are accurate. The fact that they consistently speak in unison is also significant, both because it highlights Margot’s isolation and because it underscores the role that groupthink plays in bullying; being part of a mob dampens their sense of individual responsibility while stoking their shared feelings of resentment, making it easier to behave cruelly.

“[O]nce, 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.” 

Margot’s refusal to shower reflects the difficulty she’s had adjusting to her new home; not only does she miss Earth’s sunlight, but she seems to hate or fear Venus’s rain to the point of rejecting anything that reminds her of it. Her anxieties aren’t entirely unfounded since water on Venus is so often a destructive force. However, they set her apart from the other children in a society where there seems to be an emphasis on community cohesion; it’s not unusual for a school to have communal showers, but it is notable that the children all appear to sleep in the same dormitory, despite the fact that their parents all live in the colony as well.

“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.” 

Much of the children’s dislike of Margot is rooted in jealousy. Not only has Margot experienced things that they themselves haven’t, but she also has a “possible future” that they don’t: the opportunity to return to Earth. This disparity may also reflect underlying economic or class differences between Margot’s family and the other settlers; the “thousands of dollars” her family would lose in returning to Earth would have been worth even more at the time Bradbury was writing, and this is probably not a cost the average family on Venus can afford.

“‘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!’” 

On the day the sun is forecasted to appear, the children are anxious that the predictions may be wrong; one questions, for instance, whether “the scientists really know” (Paragraph 5). In an effort to convince themselves that they aren’t in danger of missing out on anything, the children turn on the one student who knows firsthand what they would be missing: Margot. By insisting that “nothing” is happening, the students also attempt to impose their own deprivation on Margot—an impulse that culminates in locking her in the closet.

“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.”

As the rain stops, the emphasis on sensory language highlights both how empty the children’s lives have been and how different this moment is from anything they’ve experienced. Constant storms make day-to-day life on Venus both oppressively loud and largely colorless; because they live underground, the children are also unfamiliar with the smell of the outside world. Only when they venture into the sunlight for the first time do the children enjoy something comparable to the full range and vividness of human sensory experience on Earth.

“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.”

Bradbury’s description of Venus’s jungle highlights the artificiality of the settlers’ lives on the planet. In the absence of sunlight, even the natural world itself has become (at least from a human perspective) unnatural; Venus’s plants are colorless, and the things Bradbury compares them to (rubber, ash, stone) are largely lifeless or synthetic.

“The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive.” 

As “unnatural” as nature on Venus is, the children are still delighted to play in and around Venus’s jungle. They seem to take particular pleasure in the sounds the plants make as the children climb on top of them, presumably because these sounds are proof that the plants are living organisms; having grown up in an entirely manmade environment, the children aren’t used to experiencing the world around them as “resilient and alive” in a way that mirrors and affirms their own vitality.

“They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles.”

Although the other children don’t seem physically sickened by the sun’s absence in the way that Margot does, its emergence nevertheless imbues them with new energy; in this passage, the comparison of the playing children to “animals escaped from their caves” evokes images of creatures reentering the world after a long hibernation. However, this physical awakening is secondary to the spiritual awakening the children experience communing with nature. As they take in the sights and sounds of Venus’s “summer,” the children seem to gain a deeper awareness of themselves and those around them, as evidenced by their greater empathy for Margot.

“A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran.” 

Bradbury compares the children to plants several times in “All Summer in a Day,” typically to underscore the interconnectedness of humanity and the natural world. Here, however, he likens the students to fallen leaves rather than to growing flowers, weeds, or vines. In doing so, he highlights the emotional effect experiencing and then losing the sun has had on them; the children now seem lifeless, helpless, and at the mercy of nature’s forces.