In order to describe Margot, her classmates, and the planet Venus, the author Ray

Bradbury makes frequent use of metaphor and simile. Consider how these descriptions
affect how you feel at the end of the story.
In your answer, include how Bradbury’s description of Margot affected how you felt
about her as a character. How did you feel about her classmates and what they did
to her? How do you feel about the place they lived? Use examples of metaphor from
the story to support your answers.

The short story, All Summer in a Day, by Ray Bradbury, takes place in the
future on Venus and focuses on a girl named Margot who is in school there. It is
always raining on Venus and the sun is only visible except for one hour every seven
years. Margot came from Earth five years ago and has memories of the sun. She
absolutely hates living without the sun and cannot stand the endless rain. Life on
Venus without the sun has made her pale and sad All.l her classmates hate her
because she is different from them and they are jealous of her memories and that
she will return back to Earth. When Margot describes how she saw the sun on Earth,
the classmates decide to lock her in a closet. This happens on the day that the
rain briefly stops and the sun comes out. While the other children were outside
enjoying the sun for the first time, Margot is trapped in the closet. The metaphors
that Bradbury uses throughout the story show the emptiness and lack of variety and
individuality due to the loss of the sun by eliciting the paleness of Margot, the
uniformity of her classmates, and the constant rain and gray of the planet.

The descriptions of Margot are very sad and create a lot of sympathy for her
character. Margot is described as “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…” This description shows Margot as a pale girl
who has lost all her color and personality because of the world she lives in.
Without natural sunlight, which is necessary for human health, she is sad and weak.
Sorrow for Margot is also due to other characters not listening to anything that
she says. “…and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.”. Her voice is
insubstantial, passing through her classmates without affecting them at all. She
feels that she does not belong on this planet with these children, and thus she is
more sad. Margot is sad and ignored which evokes pity.

The metaphors and similes make Margot’s classmates seem like a single unit
that is hated. “The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many
weeds, intermixed.” shows the crowding and discomfort that the children create in
the classroom. Weeds are relentless, dominant, and unkind to other plants. Margot’s
classmates are looked upon as those who have similar characteristics with weeds
which destroy a beautiful rose garden. After enjoying the sun for an hour, the
children came back inside and “They stood as if someone had driven them, like so
many stakes, into the floor.” Margot’s classmates think the same, act the same, and
move everywhere together. They are a group, a unit who act as one. A group of
weeds, a group of sticks. They are not individuals like Margot. This makes them
unthinking groups like sheep are robot clones, and thus negative and disliked.

The environment and surroundings of Venus is especially described as a bland

and empty place. “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, and it was
the color of the moon.” All the things that the jungle were compared to were
different shades of gray. Gray represents emptiness. A planet where there is no
soul, no personality, and no light. The planet and flora are very bland, unlike
Earth where a major part of nature’s beauty comes from its colors. Venus is boring
and ugly. The people living there “always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless
shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the
forests, and their dreams were gone.” Gray and the constant drumming of rain show
how there is an evenness to life and a lack of variety. The rain never changes
tempo, the planet never changes color. Lack of change, lack of variety of color and
sound is emptiness.

While reading the story, one would see the lack of variety caused by a lack of
sunlight from Bradbury’s metaphors and similes. Margot is a pale and colorless
ghost of her former self on Venus. Her classmates are all one individual who behave
as one and do not think. Venus is a gray and bland planet that never changes. These
three ideas show that lack of sunlight takes away what gives uniqueness and beauty
to the world. No sun, no soul, no variety. Everything is the same. It’s a miserable
and sad existence.