All Summer In A Day

William is a nine-year-old boy and one of Margot’s classmates. He repeatedly takes a lead role in bullying Margot, encouraging other students to join him in mocking and harassing her; it’s also his idea to lock her in the closet. Nevertheless, William isn’t a one-dimensional villain. Bradbury implies that William’s hatred of Margot stems partly from resentment, since she has enjoyed opportunities he and his classmates haven’t—specifically, the experience of living on Earth and the possibility of returning there. Bradbury underscores this dynamic through the characters’ dialogue: William’s dialect (e.g. his use of double negatives in “You won’t see nothing!”) is one that American readers will likely associate with disadvantaged socioeconomic or ethnic groups.

With the exception of William, Margot’s classmates go unnamed and mostly undifferentiated; they tend to speak and act as a group. This is a deliberate stylistic choice that Bradbury uses to illustrate the story’s themes—in particular, the role that groupthink plays in bullying, especially when the target of that bullying has been chosen for their nonconformity. However, the experience of seeing the sun transforms the children. Not only does it cause them to realize the cruelty of their earlier behavior, but it also seems to free them to act as individuals rather than as part of a mob; the first time Bradbury singles out any student other than Margot or William for specific mention is when an unnamed girl begins crying after catching a raindrop. Nevertheless, the cost of the students’ newfound empathy and maturity is high, since it hinges on learning exactly what they’ve lost by living on Venus.