All Summer in a Day Literary Analysis

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Rain, Rain Go Away On the planet of Venus, the sun only comes out for one hour every seven years, momentarily pausing the otherwise perpetual rainfall. The children that live on Venus have been shaped by the weather, though all in different ways. After only five years of living on Venus, the rain has washed away Margot’s happiness and liveliness; the rest of the children her age have never known Earth or the presence of the sun, so the rain is all they know and they are quick to defend it. In “All Summer in a Day,” Bradbury argues that conformity is omnipresent, shown by means of a group of nefarious children bullying a girl who is different from them. Margot is the quiet, invisible outcast who is easily pushed around by her peers because she does not stand up for herself. The other children do not like that she is different and has had different experiences than they have, like spending years in the sun. They feel confident blocking her out because they are in an invidious group. The bully, William, accosted Margot as she attempted to describe what the sun that she remembers from her time living in Ohio. He turns the class against her, saying that she is lying and imagining her description of the sun. Margot writes, “I think that the sun is a flower; that blooms for just one hour,” to which William protested that she didn’t write it. The story begins with the excitement of the impending sunshine, which only happens for a few hours every seven years. The credence of the majority of the class was that the rain would not stop, because they were too young to remember it the last time it had happened. Margot knows that, maybe not consciously, they remember the sun. “But they always awoke to the tatting drum” of rain. This tatting drum is a metaphor for the militant actions of the other children ganging up on Margot. The drum symbolizes

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