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Reading the Modern short

story and each Element

Developmental Reading – 1

Prepared by :
Darwin L Balat and Loreto S Ramos

Submitted to :
Mr. Ariel Ramos
Elements of a Short Story
A short story is a work of short, narrative prose that is usually centered around one single
event. It is limited in scope and has an introduction, body and conclusion. Although a short story
has much in common with a novel, it is written with much greater precision. Any time you are
asked to write an essay that is based on a piece of fiction, the following guide and questions
may help you.

Setting

Setting is a description of where and when the story takes place. In a short story there are fewer
settings compared to a novel. The time is more limited. Ask yourself the following questions:

 How is the setting created? Consider geography, weather, time of day, social conditions,
etc.
 What role does setting play in the story? Is it an important part of the plot or theme? Or
is it just a backdrop against which the action takes place?
 Does the setting change? If so, how?

Study the time period, which is also part of the setting, and ask yourself the following:

 When was the story written?


 Does it take place in the present, the past, or the future?
 How does the time period affect the language, atmosphere or social circumstances of
the short story?

Characterization

Characterization deals with how the characters in the story are described. In short stories there
are usually fewer characters compared to a novel. They usually focus on one central character
or protagonist. Ask yourself the following:

 Who is the main character?


 Who or what is the antagonist?
 Are the main character and other characters described through dialogue – by the way
they speak (dialect or slang for instance)?
 Has the author described the characters by physical appearance, thoughts and feelings,
and interaction (the way they act towards others)?
 Are they static characters who do not change?
 Are they dynamic characters who change?
 What type of characters are they? What qualities stand out? Are they stereotypes?
 Are the characters believable?
 Do the characters symbolize something?

Plot and Structure

The plot is the main sequence of events that make up the story. In short stories the plot is
usually centered around one experience or significant moment. Consider the following
questions:

 What is the most important event?


 How is the plot structured? Is it linear, chronological or does it move around?
 Is the plot believable?

CONFLICT: 
Conflict or tension is usually the heart of the short story and is related to the main character. In a
short story there is usually one main struggle.
 How would you describe the main conflict?
 Is it an internal conflict within the character?
 Is it an external conflict caused by the surroundings or environment the main character
finds himself/herself in?
CLIMAX: 
The climax is the point of greatest tension or intensity in the short story. It can also be the point
where events take a major turn as the story races towards its conclusion.
 When does the climax take place?
RESOLUTION: 
The resolution is the end of the story. It focuses on how the conflict is ultimately resolved.
 Are the closing sentences significant? How does the end relate or connect to the
opening?

Narrator and Point of View

The narrator is the person telling the story.  Consider this question: Are the narrator and the
main character the same?

By point of view we mean from whose eyes the story is being told. Short stories tend to be told
through one character’s point of view. The following are important questions to consider:

 Who is the narrator or speaker in the story?


 Does the author speak through the main character?
 Is the story written in the first person “I” point of view?
 Is the story written in a detached third person “he/she” point of view?
 Is there an “all-knowing” third person who can reveal what all the characters are thinking
and doing at all times and in all places?
 Is the narrator trustworthy?

Style

The author’s style has to do with the his or her vocabulary, use of imagery, tone, or the feeling
of the story. It has to do with the author’s attitude toward the subject. In some short stories the
tone can be ironic, humorous, cold, or dramatic.

 Is the author’s language full of figurative language: metaphors, symbols, personification,


etc.?
 What images are used?
 What is the tone or mood of the story?

Theme

The theme is built on a topic, such as death, hope, the American dream, etc. and how the topic
affects the human condition, society, or life.  As a reader, focus on what the story
is revealing about the topic.  The theme should be expressed as a statement, a general
observation about human nature.

All summer in a Day


By Ray Bradbury
Setting
"All Summer in a Day" is set sometime in the distant future on the planet Venus,
where it rains continually for seven straight years at a time. The colonizing citizens live in
complex underground tunnels to avoid the torrential downpours each day. While Bradbury does
not give a specific date indicating when the story is set, the audience can infer that the story
takes place in the distant future judging by the complex society built on a faraway planet.

The main character, Margot, is an outcast, who is bullied and criticized by her classmates
for being different. Unlike the other nine-year-old students, Margot moved to Venus five years
ago and remembers seeing the sun when she lived in Ohio. Margot has no friends and is
portrayed as a rather timid, melancholy girl, who misses the warmth of the sun. On the exact
day that the rain is supposed to stop, Margot's classmates lock her inside a closet, where she
misses the rare opportunity to enjoy the sun.

The story is set in Venus sometime in the future on a day when the rain stops briefly.

A group of children are living on Venus.  It rains every day for seven years.  The children
have not seen the sun in all that time.  The children are nine years old, and have not seen the
sun since it came out seven years before for an hour.

And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of
the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization
and live out their lives.

A girl named Margot came from Earth, and remembers the sun.  The other children are
angry because she has seen it and they haven’t.  On the one day the sun comes out they
decide to lock her in a closet, and she misses the few minutes of sun.

The story demonstrates that children are children, no matter the setting.  The children are
cruel to Margot because she is different, and because they are jealous.  Due to their actions,
she misses seeing the sun.  Only then do the children regret what they have done.

Characters
Margot
Margot is nine year old and came to Venus from Earth when she was four. She is pale
and Depressed because she misses the sunlight she remembers on Earth .
The Children
The story treats the children in Margot’s class as a single Character. They are mob that
bullies Margot until they are able to understand her sadness at the loss of the sun.
The Teacher
Margot’s teacher is gone long enough for the children to lock Margot’s in a closet. She
builds Up the children's anticipation of the sunshine and warns them that the event will
brief.
William
William is the ring leader of the children bullying Margot.
Plot / Structure

“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury is structured around a single event in the life of a
group of children living on Venus: the first time they can enjoy the sun since they were babies.
However, a single child stands out – a girl named Margot, who remembers seeing the sun when
she was little, on Earth, and whose greatest wish is to see it again. The short story can also be
structured into three different parts: life before the sun; life during the hour when the sun is up;
and life after the sun.

Elements of the plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.

Title
All summer in a day

The title is a bit misleading, as it does not reveal anything about the action in the short story.
However, because the story was written by Ray Bradbury – famous for his science-fiction and
fantasy literature...

Beginning

The exposition of the story simply presents a bunch of children gathered together and looking at
the sky, talking about a phenomenon that is about to happen – the appearance of the sun:

Middle

The rising action of the story introduces Margot, a nine-years-old girl who has lived on
Earth until she was four and who remembers the sun – this is when a backstory on Margot is
introduced. Because her other classmates were born on Venus and were babies when the sun
last shone, they envy her and do not believe her when she states that the sun will come up
again:

And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years
ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was
when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they
had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the
color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered. 

Ending

The falling action is very short. Upon their return to the classroom, the children all realize
their horrible deed; they remember that Margot is still in the closet and they understand that they
have deprived her of her most ardent wish: to see the sun again:

Summary

The Children and Margot


Nine-year-old children who live in a colony on rainy Venus look out the window of their
classroom in anticipation of a big event. They are the children of "rocket men and women" who
have colonized the planet to set up a new civilization. For seven years the rain has been falling
on Venus, and it is not a gentle rain: the precipitation is accompanied by thunder, lightning, and
winds. The scientists say this will be the day when the sun shines for the first time in seven
years, and this news fills the children with excitement and anticipation.

One child, Margot, stands apart from the others. She is frail and quiet. Unlike the other
children, who were born on Venus and are too young to remember what the sun was like when
it shone seven years ago, Margot arrived on Venus from Earth when she was four years old and
can still remember what the sun looks and feels like. The absence of the sun has made Margot
so depressed and washed out that she looks like a faded picture. She does not play with the
other children, and when she tries to explain what sunshine looks and feels like, they call her a
liar. There are rumors her parents will take her back to Earth despite all the money they will lose
in doing so.
The Closet
The children tease Margot as she waits, standing apart from the group, to see the sun.
They tell her nothing will happen. To crush her spirits, the children tell her the scientists were
only joking about the sun coming out, but Margot insists the children's information is incorrect.
The taunts escalate until one student, William, leads the others to shove Margot in the closet
before the teacher can return. Margot resists, but she cannot overcome the mob. They shove a
crying Margot in and lock the door. Showing no remorse when they hear her muffled cries and
the sound of Margot throwing herself against the door, they meet their teacher and tell her they
are all present. They stand at the door in awe as the rain lets up and bathes the landscape with
the sunlight.

The Sun
The teacher releases the children, who rush out into the jungle to enjoy the sunshine. The
teacher warns they have only two hours before it starts raining again. The children are
enraptured by the glorious sunshine and blazing blue sky. They run and play, ripping off their
jackets and turning their faces up toward the sun to feel its warmth. One child remarks that the
sun feels even better than the sunlamps, and the other children agree. They marvel at the gray,
dull, lush landscape blooming in the sun, and they shed tears as they breathe the fresh air and
listen to the silence of a world with no thunder and pitter-patter of rain. For the next hour, they
run and play like animals released into the wild.

Suddenly a girl cries, and everyone stops. She has caught the first raindrops in her open
hand. The children's smiles fade as they file inside; within minutes, the torrential rain and
lightning return.

The children lament the seven years it will be until the sun shines again. Suddenly, one
child remembers Margot, still locked inside the closet. Understanding now the gravity of what
they have done, they are too ashamed to release her from the closet. Eventually, they return to
the now-silent closet door. Very slowly, they let Margot out.

Analysis

Exaggerated Fairy Tale Language

Everything about Ray Bradbury's short story is elevated to the extreme, both within the
content of the tale and in the language he uses to describe the setting, characters, and events.
Even the title "All Summer in a Day" is extreme in that it implies an entire season begins and
ends within hours. His story is classified as science fiction, but the specific language Bradbury
uses evokes elements of fairy tales. Bradbury's initial description of the rains on Venus states,
"It had been raining for seven years." Seven is a common number across many fairy tales (e.g.,
Snow White befriends seven dwarfs; the king has seven children in Six Swans) because it was
considered a number of perfection. In the same paragraph Bradbury uses more numbers to
describe the rains: "thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to
the other with rain." He repeats the word thousands in this sentence as well as later on in the
paragraph: "A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand
times to be crushed again." This is a total of four times he mentions the word thousand. The
number four holds significance in fairy tales as a number associated with nature; there are four
seasons and four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. Bradbury could be
contrasting thousands of days of rain with Earth's natural environment, implied by the number
four, to suggest that Venus is no place for human habitation.
To describe the setting, Bradbury creates a narrator with a matter-of-fact tone
reminiscent of fairy-tale narration, down to the slightly distorted choice of words such as "the
way life was forever." The word forever is reminiscent of the common phrase ever after used in
fairy tales to describe happiness, as in living happily ever after. However, forever sets a
negative tone, causing the opposite feeling while suggesting an infinite amount of time. In
describing the children, Bradbury eschews the more technical term astronauts in favor of "rocket
men and women" when explaining who the children are, which gives his tale a storybook tone.
The singsong repetition continues throughout the story, both in word choice and in sentence
format. Clauses are often repeated either in adjacent sentences or in single sentences—such
as with "Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could ever remember a time
when there wasn't rain and rain and rain" or the many times the word slowly is emphasized as
the guilty children creep to release Margot from the closet.
The children's time outside is conveyed in magical terms, describing them as "released from
their spell" and being "suspended in a blessed sea." They move through a fantastical jungle that
is like "a nest of octopi."

In a more prosaic bit of fiction set on Earth, the action contained in "All Summer in a Day"
would be ordinary to the point of barely meriting a story: children lock their classmate in a closet
and go to play outside. However, the exaggerated stakes presented by the setting—one in
which this will be Margot's only chance to see the sun before seven more years of crushing
torrential rainfall—and the elevated language create a feeling that something huge, mythic, and
of vast emotional importance is about to happen.

The Children Characterized as a Group


Only two children are named in "All Summer in a Day": Margot and William. Margot is
different from the other children and keeps herself apart from them, pining for the sun. William
functions as a leader for the group's harassment of Margot. Sometimes, Bradbury references
another speaker, using a phrase such as "one girl" or "one of the boys." However, for the most
part, the children are described as a group, and their emotions and actions are attributed to
them collectively.

While it's only one boy who suggests putting Margot in the closet, all the children
participate. No one child speaks out for Margot; instead, the narrator says, "And so, the children
hated her ... pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future." Their
dialogue is often completely unattributed, as with the first few lines of the story, and at one point
is even written as "said everyone." Bradbury goes as far to compare the children to "so many
roses" and "many weeds intermixed" as they peer out the window, which collectively makes the
students seem like one character. Later, when the children go to let Margot out, no single child
is responsible for it. The pronoun used is they.
Treating the children as a single character has multiple effects. The first and perhaps most
important of these is that it positions all of the children in unified opposition to Margot, a mob
against a single individual. This speaks to crowd dynamics and childhood bullying in general,
but it also heightens the effect within the fiction to make Margot seem even more alone and
outnumbered.

The children behaving as a single character also allows for collective character
development. There is no discussion, no one character who comes to the epiphany of what they
have done to Margot first. Instead, they experience revelation and guilt together at the same
time. This simplifies the narrative and focuses the emotion on the moment rather than dealing
with the clutter of individual personalities.

Implied Ending
“ All Summer in a Day" is brief even by the standards of short stories, coming in slightly
under 2,000 words. This leaves little time for denouement and resolution. In the final paragraphs
of the story, the children slowly move to the closet where they have locked Margot. Her
struggling has stopped, and she has gone silent.

What the children find when they open the closet is left uncertain. Having already established
that Margot's desire to see the sun again is wasting her away, her final state remains
undescribed. She will certainly be worse off than before, but by choosing not to make it explicit,
Bradbury makes the reader complicit in the narrative. The reader must supply this final bit of
detail about Margot's fate.

Climax
The climax of this short story is when the sun comes out for the first time in seven
years.  The kids have locked Margot in a closet and to their astonishment, the sun comes out. 
They bolt outside to the sun, frolicking and playing in the illumination.  They play until it begins
to rain and then they have to come back inside.  It becomes evident to them, in a dawning- like
realization, that they left Margot in the closet
This moment of the sun appearing is the climax because it is the point in which the action
is the greatest.  In the conflict between Margot and the group of students, it is at this point where
the tension between both is the highest in an almost contradictory moment of unity and
symmetry.  It is Bradbury's genius to construct the situation so that Margot was actually right. 
Rather than praise her for her correct world view, the kids flock towards her absolute sense of
accuracy and her vision, something that she is not able to appreciate because of being
marginalized.  The height of the plot, the moment where the action is most intense, is in this
moment of unity, one in which there is validation but not for the person who advocated it.  In
this, there is a climax and a sense of diminishing action appears at the end when the children
come to the silent realization that they have to release Margot out of the closet.

Conflict
conflict is person vs. society as one little girl is bullied by her classmates because she
has seen the sun before and they haven't. At first, the conflict revolves around Margot and
William. Margot believes the sun will shine that day as the scientists predict; however, William
dispenses negativity and doubt in the classroom. All of the children want to see the
sunshine because they have never experienced it—or at least they don't remember it. Margot
probably wants to see it shine more because she misses it. 

When the kids shove Margot into a closet before the sun shines, the reader wonders if she
will escape in time to enjoy the rays of the sun. Maybe someone will remember Margot in the
closet and free her in time to play in the sun. Unfortunately, the climax of the story comes when
the clouds cover up the sun again, and a little girl remembers her and screams, "Margot!" It is at
this point that everyone knows Margot's fate and that she won't be able to see the sun that day
or for another seven years. The resolution, then, is when the class goes back into the building to
free Margot from the closet after the sun goes away. The text seems to suggest that the kids
know they have done something wrong to Margot because it says the following: 

They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of the cold rain. . . They walked over to the
closet door slowly and stood by it. Behind the closed door was only silence. They unlocked the
door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

The fact that the children proceed very slowly when freeing Margot suggests that they
know what they did is wrong. They are not happy, joyful, skipping, or shouting because of a fun
day in the sun. The moment is diminished because of their hateful actions toward a classmate.
Therefore, the resolution is that Margot is freed, but she doesn't get to enjoy the sun; sadly, the
children recognize that they did something they can never take back, change, or rectify.

Narrator and point of view

“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury is rendered by a third-person narrator. The


narrator is anonymous, and he functions as an observer of the characters.

Regarding life on Venus, the narrator seems to have unlimited knowledge. He knows, for
instance, that “it had been raining for seven years”  and that it will continue to rain “everywhere
and forever”.

When it comes to Margot, the narrator has unlimited knowledge regarding her thoughts


and feelings. This is why we get to know that Margot does not engage in the same activities as
other children, that she misses the sun and that she wishes to see it once again.Regarding the
rest of the children, the narrator simply presents what is happening right when their actions

Style
Bradbury frequently uses imagery, such as that of the sun. Sun imagery is often
representative of God and enlightenment. Because the children who have lived on Venus most
of their lives have not seen the sun, they are limited in their perspectives. For this reason, they
resent Margot's little verse that is superior to theirs, even accusing her of not having written
these lines:

I think the sun is a flower,


That blooms for just one hour. 
Theme
The main theme in “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury is bullying, which is caused
by jealousy and envy. Interestingly enough, Ray Bradbury has chosen to explore this theme in
the context of a future generation that has the chance to travel between planets as a
consequence of evolution. Even there, in the fictional setting of Venus, after hundreds or
thousands of years of human evolution, bullying is still present. This shows that, in Bradbury’s
opinion, bullying others who are inferior is an element so deeply-rooted in human nature that it
perpetuates across the centuries. A sub-theme of the short story is nostalgia and longing, which
is illustrated by both Margot and her classmates.

Bullying

Generally, bullying means the use of force or verbal threats with the purpose of
intimidating others and make them obey or feel inferior. Physical bullying is rarely common
among adults; for them, bullying takes the form of verbal attacks – whose meaning is more or
less hidden – and it is most of the times used in the workplace. Physical bullying is more
dangerous when it comes to children, something which is also noticeable in “All Summer in a
Day”.

In the short story, bullying takes multiple forms. First of all, bullying is generated by envy;
children are envious that Margot spent her first four years on Earth, seeing the sun. In this case,
bullying takes the form of mockery:

"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.

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