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All Summer In A Day (Supplementary)

Unit 5 – Supplementary

All Summer in a Day

Ray Bradbury

Warm Up

a) What makes the earth the one and only living planet?
b) Name a few things that make the earth a unique planet.
- animals
- ozone layer

c) Do you enjoy watching movies? What type of movies do you like to watch?
Here are the pictures of a few blockbuster movies.

Classify the movies:
- Historical
- Comedy
- Horror
- Cartoon
- Science Fiction

Discuss:
Gravity is a science fiction movie.
- Which aspect of the movie is real science?
- Which aspect of the movie is fictional?

Science Fiction (Sci-fi) is a genre of speculative fiction, typically dealing with imaginative concepts such as advanced science and technology, space flight, time travel, and extraterrestrial life. Science Fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a ‘literature of ideas’.

All Summer in a Day

Can you imagine a day without the Sun?

Here is a Science Fiction Story that explores the theme of life on Venus, the other planet, which as of today is not a possibility.

“It’s stopping, it’s stopping!”
“Yes, yes!”

Margot stood apart from them, from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn’t rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall.

It had been raining for seven years;
thousands upon thousands of days
compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy that they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again.

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 the raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives.

“Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Now?”
“Soon.”

They pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

It rained.

All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it:

I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.

That was Margot’s poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside.

“Aw, you didn’t write that!” protested one of the boys.
“I did,” said Margot. “I did.”

Margot stood alone. 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.

She remembered the sun.

“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.

But she remembered.

And then—

“All a joke!” said the boy, and seized her roughly.
“Hey, everyone, let’s put her in a closet before the teacher comes!”

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.

The rain stopped.

The sun came out.

It was the colour of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile colour. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling into the springtime.

They ran for an hour and did not stop running.

And then—

A single raindrop.

She began to cry, looking at it.

The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cold around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house.

“Margot.”

They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

About the Author

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. He worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, and fiction. Widely regarded as the most important figure in the development of science fiction as a literary genre, Ray Bradbury’s works evoke the themes of racism, censorship, technology, nuclear war, humanistic values and the importance of imagination.

On April 16, 2007, Bradbury received a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize jury “for his distinguished, prolific, and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.”

Glossary

weeds – unwanted wild plants
peering – looking
concussion – confusion for a short time
tidal waves – large ocean waves
slackening – gradually slowing down
shove – rough push
Ohio – a midwestern state of the US
patterning – regular
clutch – hold tightly
savagely – aggressively
whispered – spoke in a very quiet and low voice
predict – anticipate
surged – moved suddenly
slammed – banged
muffled – muted
avalanche – snow slide
repercussions – unwelcome effects
tremble/tremor – shake
spell – magical situation
tumultuously – disruptively
octopi – plural of octopus
resilient – recover from difficult conditions
squinted – looked
solemn – serious

Questions

1. Based on your understanding of the story, answer the following questions in a sentence or two.

a) What do children get ready for at the beginning of the story?
b) How is life in the planet Venus described?
c) Who is Margot? How is she different from the rest of the children?
d) What does Margot like the most – the sun or the rain?
e) What was Margot waiting for? Why did William say that it was a joke?
f) Why does Margot wish to return to the earth?
g) Why did the children lock Margot in a closet?
h) Margot could recall what the sun looked like while the other children could not. Why?
i) How long did the Sun shine on Venus?
j) Why did one of the girls wail?

2. Based on your understanding of the story, answer the following in three or four sentences.

a) What is the significance of the particular day described in the story “All Summer in a Day”?
b) What happens to Margot while the teacher is out of the classroom?
c) How did Margot describe the sun to others?
d) How did the children react when the sun came out after seven years?
e) Why did William and the other children bully Margot?
f) What were their feelings towards Margot at the end of the story?
g) What does the title of the story convey?

3. Answer the following questions in a paragraph in about 100–150 words each.

a) What is the conflict between Margot and the other children in the story, “All Summer in a Day”?
b) How do the children react to the long awaited event in the story?
c) The sun brought about a positive change in the attitude of the children. Illustrate the statement.
d) Did the children regret having locked Margot in a closet? Answer citing relevantly from the story.

4. Based on your understanding of the story, complete the story map.

Beginning	Middle	End
Title:
Author:
Setting	Character

Word Grid Activity

Find out and encircle the following words in the word grid.
(The words have been placed horizontally, vertically, diagonally and even back to front)

N E T A N I M I R C S I D M U Z H T D E M S P K L M R A H N T C C A S R T S E A O E O S L B D I E X P E R I E N C E G O L Y D K V I Q E T U Y A K F C Q A E S T A R T S D I L G S K F Z R E M I N D E D K L S A S I A P B S D M C K P F S G S B J X P A N T I C I P A T E D B