When Your Happiness is Taken Away: Bullying Effects on Well-Being in Ray

Bradbury’s All Summer in a Day

Abstract
All Summer in a Day is a speculative fiction written by Ray Bradbury in 1954. This story is about
a character named Margot who experienced challenges in her social life since she moved to
Venus from Earth. As someone who had the privilege of seeing the sun, her classmates
despised and bullied her. The most heart-breaking part of the story is when Margot was locked
while her peers went out enjoying the sun that rose only once in seven years. This paper is
going to discuss how Margot deals consciously and unconsciously with the bullying directed to
her. According to the theory of Positive Psychology by Dr. Martin Seligman, there are five
elements that contribute to someone’s mental well-being: Positive emotion, Engagement,
Relationship, Meaning, and Achievement (PERMA). Margot’s reaction must root from her poor
well-being because some of the things that kept her alive were taken, her life purpose
(Meaning), her enjoyment in school (Engagement), and the healthy relationship with her friends
(Relationship) that she deserved. Finally, Margot’s story is a metaphor of a real life in which
someone has to struggle in a new environment, especially when they have more advantages
than the majority of the new society.

Keyword: bullying, well-being, PERMA

Introduction
Science fiction is one of the best methods of illustrating the reality of the world. The
example of this depiction could be seen in a short story entitled All Summer in a Day, written by
Ray Bradbury in 1954. The story takes place on the planet Venus, where it rains every day, and
the sun comes out only once in seven years. The main character, Margot, used to grow up on
Earth, but “five years ago”, she moved to Venus with her family. She remembered how the sun
looked and how it felt to have the sun rising every day. She liked to talk about the sun to her
friends and wrote a poem about it. However, as she kept describing the magnificence of the
sun, jealousy and hatred started to grow inside her classmates. It then developed into verbal
and physical bullying which caused distress to Margot. This story takes an existing reality of
moving into a new environment, where someone has to struggle to survive within a new social
group, especially when they have privileges the majority of the society never owned or
experienced.
 Ray Bradbury must have some concern about the reality that someone faces when
moving to a new environment that he wrote this literature work. He is known as a science fiction
writer, even though he prefers to call himself a fantasy writer because he depended on his
imaginations rather than the science. His other works also have an other-world settings, which
makes it distinguishing but also question-trigger for readers as to find the writer’s intention in
creating such settings. When he was a teenager, he experienced moving from Waukagen to
Los Angeles in 1934. This might be one of the motivations for him in writing All Summer in a
Day as he has experienced living in a new environment as a child.
Despite the things that make people in the environment annoyed or envious, people
have no right to harm someone, because it may result in their poor well-being. In Margot’s case,
her poor mental health can be seen from any of her actions that may indicate it. For example,
she spoke with a low voice, which can indicate her low self-esteem. Low self-esteem is also part
of poor well-being that is caused by her peers’ bullying. However, it is a challenge to analyze
whether her signs of poor well-being come from bullying or anything else.
Bullying comes in different forms, it can be verbal and physical. The characters in All
Summer in a Day performed both types of bullying. They confronted her when she spoke,
protested everything she said, never responded kindly to her, pushed her, and locked her in the
closet. These signs are shown little by little in the little space that a short story has. Yet even
though short, readers can take the uncomfortable nuance that is built in Margot’s surroundings
through Bradbury’s choices of words and easy-reading description.
In the first few paragraphs, I mentioned about “well-being” a lot. Derived from Oxford
Dictionary, well-being is a state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy. According to a theory
by Dr. Martin Seligman, through his book Flourish, he elaborated that well-being is a construct
of several elements, and each element contributes to it, but does not define it. Each of the
elements is also measurable. He took the weather as an example. Defining weather is seen
from not only the heat, but also the wind speed, sunshine, humidity, and many more. Same as
well-being, it is a construct of five elements which will be elaborated below.
Dr. Seligman as a psychology researcher and a professor of Positive Psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania stated that the five elements people pursue to gain well-being
includes Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning, and Achievement. It is often
addressed as its mnemonic, PERMA. Positive emotions means positive affirmations, even
though one might deal with difficulty. Engagement means enjoying the process (just like the
Flow theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). Relationship means connection or networks. Meaning
means life purpose. Finally, Achievement means being able to gain something.
 Every human being has their own way in increasing their most comfortable state. For
Margot, it is her remembrance of the sun and her hope of seeing the sun that kept her going
(Meaning). We can see it in the way she was always excited in sharing about it and how she felt
sad because all she could see was rain. Therefore, we can predict how terrible it is for Margot
when her hope was robbed from her.
In addition to Meaning as the way Margot pursues her well-being, Margot is also robbed
from a healthy relationship because her peers bullied her. She might gain a good relationship
with her parents, knowing that they were considering moving back to Earth or feeling the
uncomfortable adjustment. However, a relationship with friends should be something significant
for Margot because she spent a lot of time in school. Within that moment, a support system is
needed.
These affect how Margot feels and acts. For example, she isolated herself, spoke with a
low voice, felt helpless, and felt depressed. It is necessary to examine them closely, to
determine whether these contributions were caused by the rejection, confrontation, and the
bullying from her peers, because there might be other factors such as her own longing of the
previous world. This part of analysis will be discussed further in the discussion section.

Discussion
The story of All Summer in a Day starts with the scene of students gathered to wait for
the sun, on the day the scientist predicted. It is described that they were grouping like roses or
weeds that waited for the hidden sun to rise. However, Margot was not part of the crowd. She
stood apart from the people who had never sensed the sun.
In the next scenes, Margot is also portrayed being alone or apart from her peers. It is
tricky to figure out whether her isolation is part of the bullying effects because of some reasons.
First, the indication of bullying started after the first mention of her withdrawal. Second, there is
an assumption if it is loneliness or solitary.
However, knowing that while the story flows, signs of rejection and bullying start to
appear, we may assume that the bullying has probably happened a long time ago, including the
time before the mention of Margot’s isolation first appears. Answering the second hypothesis, it
can be considered as loneliness because the reason Margot stood apart was due to her anxiety
of not being accepted. Fear of rejection does not appear all of sudden. In this case, it stems
from her acknowledgment that she had ‘the biggest crime’ (of remembering the sun when she
was on Earth), her opinion which was not heard, mixed with her inner despise of the new place,
Venus. Brown, et al (2021) stated that isolation is a self-induced coping mechanism that
someone used to deal with anxiety. Even though it can be relieving because one does not have
to interact with people who trigger their fear, it can be stressful because they lack a support
system.
The proof of anxiety is also depicted in the way Ray Bradbury gives no gap of feeling
cheerful mood when explaining Margot. The word choices he chose emphasized how awful
Margot’s inner condition, such as “a very frail girl”, “she was different”, and “rain has washed the
blue of her eyes, red from her mouth, and yellow from her hair”. The setting of constant rain also
helps create her unstable feelings about her relationship with her classmates.
Margot’s tendency to withdraw herself from her classmates does not allow her to have a
positive relationship with her friends, which contributes to her unstable well-being (Relationship).
According to Baumeister & Leary (1995), having a healthy relationship is a fundamental need
for humans. This need is as significant as the need for food, shelter, and sleep and that this
affects someone’s psychological condition if it is failed to achieve, especially when someone is
experiencing social exclusion. Therefore, even though Margot did not mention whether she
wanted to have friends or not, her inner self craved the desire to belong to the environment. No
matter if she makes efforts to have friends or not, she still deserved a good relationship in the
school in which she spent much of her time.
Still related to Margot’s isolation, she is also shown disengaged when she was supposed
to have fun playing with her friends. In the story, Margot did not run or react to anything when
her friends tagged her in tag games. Feeling isolated, disconnected and unfocused states are
the signs of emotional numbness. Someone on the internet describes it as if their existence is
invisible and that there is a barrier that prevents them from people who engage cheerfully in
front of them. She also stated that she felt that her presence does not matter to anyone. This is
exactly how Margot’s feeling is described.
She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at
all her voice would be a ghost.
“An old photograph” is a metaphor for Margot’s unappreciated presence between the
“colorful” or the joyful surroundings. It represents how different she was and how detached she
was from the present environment. “If she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost” shows how
her opinion and everything she said was never entertained.
Not only would her sayings be ignored, sometimes, she would also be argued and
rebutted when talking about things. For instance, once, she wrote a poem about the sun.
However, one of her classmates yelled at her because he did not believe that Margot actually
wrote it herself. The other time, her peers yelled when she shared her story about the sun.
Then, when she believed about the scientists’ prediction about the sunrise in Venus, her peers
started to yell, and then pushed and urged her to the closet.
The signs of bullying in the story are shown in some little actions which sometimes seem
unseen and nonviolent. However, those small actions toward Margot contributed to how she felt
and especially her overall well-being.
Margot is also shown that “her lips barely moved” when she was supposed to sing
together in class about happiness, life, and games. This supports the other evidence that she
may experience detachment as a sign of her emotional numbness.
This is aligned with Dr. Martin Seligman’s theory of well-being, in which Engagement (E),
or the ability to enjoy the process, is failed to achieve. For the unwelcome environment, Margot
faced difficulty in adjusting herself in the new environment, therefore it was hard to enjoy the
present moment while most of her time was spent in her school. So, it is unfair that she could
not enjoy the moments she had in school.
However, when Margot was required to sing or talk about the sun and the summer, she
was very excited. Among other things, this is the only one that she felt was worth living. It gives
her life a Meaning (M). Understanding this knowledge, the effect it created for Margot when her
only hope was banished is almost incurable, when she missed the phenomenon of sunrise of
being locked in a closet.
Other than isolation and emotional numbness, helplessness also appears as Margot’s
response to the unsupportive, unhealthy, and harmful school environment. According to
Berkeley Well-Being Institute, helplessness is a state in which there is nothing we are able to do
to change a bad situation and we stop trying. In this mental state, people believe that they lack
power to do the things to change the situation because they believe it will not create an impact
(to change).
The most evident sign of her helplessness of Margot is when the word “helpless” itself is
used to describe Margot’s eyes-look. It happened when Margot started to hesitate to tell her
peers about scientist prediction because the other children confronted her that she was telling
lies.
"Nothing !" he cried. "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 !"
"Oh, but," Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists
predict, they say, they know, the sun…"
 Her helplessness is also depicted in how she whispered. Low-pitched voice shows her
hesitation that indicates low confidence which may also suggest that she had a low self-esteem,
especially when faced with people who constantly oppressed her. This confrontation made
Margot believe that this situation is somehow out of control, moreover when this is done
collectively.
The bullying made her even more helpless when it began to harm her physically.
Margot’s immediate reaction when her classmates pushed and locked her was crying,
protesting, and banging the door. This is when the bullying reaches its climax in the story.
They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and
then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door.
They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against
it. They heard her muffled cries.
Then, the children could not hear any cries or screams from Margot’s closet when they
released her. The silence when the children unlocked the closet room is a manifestation of her
helplessness. If crying is a coping mechanism, silence contains beliefs that crying or screaming
would not have any effect to change the unfortunate situation, even though Margot might not
even think about it.
They walked over to the closet door slowly and stood by it.
Behind the closet door was only silence.
They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.
The most realistic explanation to her quietness can also be her exhaustion of asking
help, but with the exhaustion came mixed unpleasant feelings with her. Nobody helped her, and
that is how she stopped. This helplessness does not allow her to have energy to protest or be
mad, so she chose to be silent. Her exhaustion also may contain emotional numbness in which
she did not understand anymore how she felt and how she was supposed to respond.
Ray Bradbury left readers with questions about the story ending. However, given the
evidence of how much seeing the sun meant to Margot (Meaning), readers can speculate the
heartbreak that she experienced. This heartbreak hurt Margot to the furthest point of her
patience, that she could not feel anything anymore. Imagining the huge heartbreak, I assume
that it might affect her in the long run, or at least she could never forget about it until she grew
up.
The scene where the children were joyfully playing in the sun shows how they obtained
their guilt of understanding what Margot meant by saying how beautiful and energizing the sun
was. This situation is similar to when someone, for example, is stealing a chocolate bar from a
brother. When they taste it, they feel the ultimate delicacy and finish it to the last crumbs. At that
moment, they will realize why their brother was craving for it and cried really hard when it was
taken.
The whole part of this fiction is indeed a metaphor of a life reality. Earth is a
representation of a comfortable environment where someone could rejoice in some enjoyment.
Whereas, Venus represents a new environment which someone has to adjust in. Margot’s
schoolmates depict the people of a new environment. It often happens in the society where new
people struggle to be accepted in a new society, and it is especially harder when the new
settlers have more privileges that they do not own. It causes jealousy among the children, even
though to the new people, it was not considered a privilege back then or now.
It depicts the society who hate people who are better than them, and not only that they
hate, but they also act on it by bullying them. At first, they just bully them verbally. As time goes
by, their acceptance of their bad behavior increases. So, they would not hesitate to bully the
victims physically. No matter if they intend to destroy the victims’ mental health or not, it always
impacts them. Sometimes, the impact is even bigger than they think, and it might not heal even
until they grow up.
Ray Bradbury, in the story chose simple writing styles, which might be for a purpose of a
wider range of target readers. Since children are involved, this story can be directed to them to
read as well.

Conclusion
Rejection and bullying in the story All Summer in a Day gave three major effects for
Margot: social withdrawal, emotional numbness, and helplessness. Each with evidence taken
from the description about Margot and the conversation between Margot and her peers. Those
effects are derived from the perspective of PERMA theory by Dr. Martin Seligman, that are
some of Margot’s reasons for well-being, which are Relationship (R), Engagement (E), and
especially Meaning (M). Meaning is the biggest thing that affects Margot, given the description
of how much Margot depended on it. The interesting part of this speculative fiction is how this is
identical to the reality of social life. Each event and setting represents real life.
References
Arts.gov. Ray Bradbury. Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/ray-bradbury
Biography.com. (2021, October 29). Ray Bradbury. Retrieved from
https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/ray-bradbury
Brown V, Morgan T, Fralick A. (2021). Isolation and mental health: thinking outside the box.
Gen Psychiatr. 2021 May 24;34(3):e100461. doi: 10.1136/gpsych-2020-100461. PMID:
34131627; PMCID: PMC8149428.
DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., & Masicampo, E. J. (2009). Rejection: resolving the paradox
of emotional numbness after exclusion. In Vangelisti, A. L. Feeling hurt in close
relationships (pp. 123-124). Retrieved from https://books.google.co.id/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=xZ8gAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA123&dq=emotional+numbness&ots=mxv
9e7PA4a&sig=9nxhi0oJQHwIrfoNM2hJYs27AJ8&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=emotional
%20 numbness &f=false
Educare. What are the signs and symptoms of poor mental health. Retrieved from
https://www.educare.co.uk/news/what-are-the-signs-and-symptoms-of-poor-mental-
health
Gregerson, E. Ray Bradbury. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ray-
Bradbury
Healthline.com. (2023, February 15). Understanding emotional numbness. Retrieved from:
https://www.healthline.com/health/feeling-numb#what-does-it-feel-like
Lindberg, S. (2022, November 7). What is emotional numbness? Retrieved from
https://www.verywellmind.com/emotional-numbing-symptoms-2797372
Madeson, M. (2017, February 24). Seligman’s PERMA+ model explained: a theory of wellbeing.
Retrieved from https://positivepsychology.com/perma-model/
Seligman, M. E. P. (2013). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-
being. Simon & Schuster.
Schultz, K. Helplessness: theory, definition & emotions. Retrieved from:
https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/helplessness.html
Upenn. PERMA theory of wellbeing and PERMA workshop. Retrieved from
https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/learn-more/perma-theory-well-being-and-perma-workshops