You could write an essay about what Ray Bradbury is saying about mob mentality in “All Summer and a Day”.
“All Summer in a Day” shows Margot, the quiet, invisible outcast of the class, being singled out by the rest of her classmates, after telling everyone the sun would come out. The sun never comes out on Venus, making this an extraordinary deal. The deal was too much for the class, and the students display a term called “mob mentality.” Mob mentality is, unfortunately, very common within society. Human beings don’t like dramatic changes in their environment, especially when it is out of the ordinary. When someone comes along and says a seemingly-insane statement, they overreact and force that person out of society. “‘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 class refuses to believe such an idea. It’s too much to handle, therefore, they resort to just ignoring the statement altogether, excluding Margot. A large group is required to do this, because one individual couldn’t simply block out another, which is why the children felt so confident doing it, not truly realizing what they were doing to her. Feeling overpowered, they weren’t expecting the sun to actually come out. After they remembered Margot was in the closet, “they stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the foor.
They looked at each other and looked away…. their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down.” Mob mentality will result in guilt, because the group never considers the possibility of the event actually happening. That guilt is exactly what the children felt towards Margot. In general, Bradbury is saying to the reader that before you get in a group and go against a single person, listen to what they have to say and consider it. History has had many figures like this, and if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Try to prevent mob mentality, and open your ears to all sides of a story. ====================================================
You could write about how the story mirrors your own experience: In my junior high English class, I was the lonely nerd. I had frizzy hair from air-drying my hair naturally, thinking that I would look naturally beautiful with flowing dark locks. Instead, one side of my head was frizzed out; the other side was straight and flipped up at the bottom. Combined with glasses, zits, a big coat to hide my already 34Cs at 13, and my choice of wearing a dress over long striped trousers, and I looked like a cross between an insane bag lady and Velma from Scooby-Doo. No wonder I was the class freak. With that classic nerd reality, I lived my days in the dark, my hair over my face and drawing on my hands flowers and happy faces and stars and any random symbols I could think of. It wasn’t until my English teacher assigned us to read Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” that I felt touched and lifted by the words about of a rainy planet and its sallow-faced inhabitants. The story is only four pages long, but within those words I found solace and comfort. “All Summer in a Day,” the 1954 short story by Bradbury, details the lives of schoolchildren who were born on Venus by Earthling parents. The world is dark and rainy and morose because the sun only comes out once every seven years, and the children, now nine, were too young to remember it. One classmate, Margot, who had come from Ohio when she was four, remembers the sun, but nobody believes her. She is a pale frail little outcast, and in the eyes of her classmates, rightly treated as so.
As I read this story, I felt like I was being touched from inside, like a light opened inside my heart. I could feel Margot’s frailness and loneliness, and wanted to hug her, for my ostracism was happening at that moment. “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.” Just rereading that again brings me back to that place and time, when my voice was hoarse and small, and my eyes felt worn out from crying myself to sleep over my misery and anger and frustration. I often didn’t know why I was the way I was, why I read so much and kept to myself and said the wrong things to be funny and ended up feeling like a total freak compared to the other kids. “If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow.” I was horrible at sports and would end up standing in the outfield where the ball would never reach me and I would daydream to pass the time. “So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.” Wherever I went, I was treated like an outcast. I felt there was some kind of smell or sense about me that kept people away, or being mocked either to my face or behind my back. So I learned to live inside of my imagination. Unlike Margot, I had never been locked in a closet, but I had been cornered in the hallway, while a bully looked me over like I was a shivering mouse and psyched me out with a fake punch. Or I would be slapped by an intimidating bully, and if I fought back, I ended up being labeled as having “difficulties socializing” or “anger issues,” and labeled as retarded by the school authorities. That was the hell of my 13th year, and while I had few pleasures, “All Summer in a Day” was one of my few reclusive spots where I could hide in that world and relate to poor Margot. Here are just some basic notes about the story:
All Summer in a Day was written by Ray Bradbury. It was originally published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in March 1954. In the 1980s, PBS produced and aired its television adaptation in a less emotionally distressing manner than the original version. The ending was extended to show that the children felt sorry for what they have done to the lead character named Margot. Characters of All Summer in a Day
Margot – Margot is a little, sickly girl who used to live in Ohio. She is the only child on Venus who can remember how the Earth and the Sun looked like. A “very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years,” Margot was the subject of bullying among her classmates. They stuffed Margot inside the closet so she could not see the sun after a prediction came that it would appear.
William – William is one of Margot’s classmates. He hates Margot because he thought she was weird and different from them. That is why on the day that sun was about to shine, he led the class in stuffing Margo inside the closet. Setting
All Summer in a Day was set in Venus, which, because of its thick atmosphere,
was filled with rain all the time. Seldom did the sun appear – once every seven years – and when it did, the rocket men only had one or two hours to enjoy it. Plot of All Summer in a Day
The story is about a class of schoolchildren on Venus. The thick atmosphere of Venus still exists at this time, and it is constantly raining. The sun is only visible for one hour every seven years. Margot is a little girl who moved to Venus from Earth just five years before the story takes place, so she is the only one in her class to remember sunshine. She is an outcast because of her sensitivity and the fact that it is rumored that she may return to Earth next year. The kids are jealous of Margot because she remembers the sun from her time on Earth. They were only two years old when it was last visible from Venus and do not remember it. She almost has a nervous breakdown because she gets so sick of living with the relentless rain. Margot describes the sun in the poem that she wrote as a “sun flower,” “a penny,” or “like a fire in the stove.” The other children do not believe that she wrote the poem. The students bully her because she is from earth. While the teacher is out of the room, a boy convinces the other children to lock Margot in the closet. The teacher takes the other children outside to enjoy the two hours of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot. They run and play, skip jump and prance about, savoring every second of their newly found freedom. All at once, a girl starts to cry because she feels a raindrop in her hand. She sadly realizes the rain is returning. The thunder sounds, and the children run back inside. Suddenly, one of the children remembers Margot, still locked in the closet. They stand frozen realizing what they have done. The children walk slowly towards the closet and let Margot out. The precious sun has come and gone, leaving Margot still pale in gloom and darkness. Point Of View
Bradbury’s capacity to breathe a monochromatic tone on the character enabled the readers to catch up with the emotion and, more or else, feel the same kind of loneliness, anxiety, despair, and melancholy that Margot felt in the story. Theme of All summer in a Day
Margot epitomizes the story’s theme: loneliness. Pale as white and almost
ghostly, she is depressed and her debilitating situation is best attributed to the absence of the sun. Too much rain, indeed that even to take a shower, she never wanted. But the story also showed promise because, though untold by author, Margot will be brought back to the Earth that she so longed to see again. Lesson
The story’s lesson is an everyday catchphrase: do not do to others if you don’t want others do it to you. Margot’s cruel classmates treated her differently. Although those nasty kids were able to see the sun, they weren’t the chance to enjoy it. Even before they strode on the climax of their happiness, the first drop of rain fell, and drops of tears ensued thereafter. They could only envy Margot for she had the luxury to savor the warmth of the sun five years in her life.
