Misery and Belief of Miracle: The Manifestation of Twentieth Century Distress in

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury

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. During the time this story was written, Ray Bradbury had experienced
several depressing events in his life, starting with the Great Depression which impacted his
financial condition in around 1926, and then the postwar impact in 1945. This paper reveals how
his isolated feelings as an influence of those eventful history is reflected in the story. The
analysis of the paper is approached using psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud. This study
figured out that Ray Bradbury unconsciously built the theme of misery and hope in this short
story which reflected the events that happened in his life. The setting of planet Venus is misery,
while the sunrise is the hope. Margot’s character also represents hope which is hard to hold in
the times of darkness as what people did during the Great Depression and the postwar era, and
Margot’s friends who bullied her represent humans who believed that ‘miracle’ does not exist,
but their unconscious mind or the id actually desire to have one.

Keyword: misery, postwar, hope

Introduction
Science fiction gained its popularity since the beginning of twentieth century America. It
especially reached its ‘Golden Age’ in around 1940 to 1950s, and this is the year when famous
science fiction writers published their stories. Science fiction stories were published in pulp
magazines, a cheap magazine that is easily accessed by people. (Stockwell, 2000)
Ray Bradbury was one of the most influential science fiction writers who wrote much
about outer space exploration and the dystopian world. One of his most famous works was The
Martian Chronicles, which theme was about colonization and tells about people who came to
Mars and fought with the Martians. He also wrote many other works related to outer space
exploration, including All Summer in a Day.
All Summer in a Day tells the story of a young girl named Margot who moved from Earth
to Venus some years ago. In Venus, it rained all day and they only had a chance to see the
sunrise once in seven months. Margot, who experienced seeing the sun, was hated and bullied
by her peers for telling how beautiful the sun is. The story reached its climax when Margot was
locked in a closet while the children were out enjoying the sun that rose for only an hour.
This story is a representation of real social life. Venus, earth, Margot, and her
classmates are symbols to real things. Therefore, this paper is going to reveal what these things
symbolize and how it relates to the socio-historical background that surrounded the publication
time of this story which was published in 1954.
Throughout his life, Ray Bradbury witnessed some historical events, especially those
that happened in the beginning to the midst of the twentieth century. When he was a teenager,
he had to move out from his hometown in Waukegan, Illinois, to Arizona in 1926. He moved
again to Los Angeles in 1937. His migration was due to his family’s financial problems which
happened during the Great Depression. Chicago was one of the most impacted cities as it
depended its sector on manufacturing which is the hardest field to succeed on a national level. It
is said that less than 50 percent of people who worked in manufacturing stayed there in 1933.
Many people were unemployed, and it’s especially harder for black Americans and Mexican
Americans. Therefore they were frustrated, and added that there was a fiscal crisis as well since
the beginning of 1920s.
Ray Bradbury refers to his hometown as a “Green Town” as what he wrote in his two
works, Death Is A Lonely Business and A Graveyard For Lunatics. Both are novels under the
theme of mystery and existentialism. Green Town represents a place where he has freedom to
explore himself, so it makes it his comfort place. Given this fact, I assume that leaving his
hometown was difficult even though he encountered some weaknesses that need to be
improved there. He had to settle in another place, therefore adapt again, and this is similar to
what he wrote in All Summer in a Day.
This decade of the Great Depression is one of the most traumatic events in history as
the economy failed, starting from unemployment, low-paid work, migration, and poverty. It had a
massive impact on social and psychological life as well, as many people lost their will and hope
to survive in those dark times. Suicide rates increased and people who went to mental health
facility increased too. People gave up on their dreams, their college, marriage, and everything
that could give them a better life.
People still suffered in the following years as World War II began. Even though economic
conditions gained a better condition as 17 million new jobs were created, Americans were never
fully healed, especially when they witnessed another “misery” in their sequence of life. World
War II left them with anxiety, alienated feelings, and depression.
 However, creativity increased in this time period. People started to think of ways to deal
with their loneliness and hopelessness with art, music, and literature. The emergence of rock
and roll music, television shows, and many more.
The Golden Age of science fiction happened in that era of Postwar, during the 1950s,
where science fiction stories were published in pulp magazines to entertain people with
imaginative stories of life they could never imagine to have. Ray Bradbury stated in his book
Zen in The Art of Writing that “while art cannot save people from wars, envy, greed, old age,
death, it revitalizes us amidst it all”. (Aggelis, 2003)
This paper analyzes the motivation of the writer in creating this story through the lens of
psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century and early 20th
century, especially the theory of unconscious mind and the theory of psyche. It focuses on
hidden motives that help to clarify literature through its writing and the characters’ actions. For
Freud, literary work is like a dream which contains fantasy including unfulfilled wish or desire in
reality. (Hossain, 2017)
The unconscious mind is the portion of the mind which is too painful to stay in the
conscious mind. It reveals the relationship between past experiences and present behaviors.
Meanwhile, the theory of psyche explains that there are three structures in a human's psyche of
personality, they are id, ego, and superego. Id represents pleasure, instincts, gratification, and it
remains in the unconscious mind. Ego deals with the conscious mind which is responsible for
bridging the ego and superego. Last, superego has something to do with morality, in which one
has been taught which one is bad and good. (Hossaini, 2017)
Using this approach means seeing literature as a manifestation of the writer’s mind,
considering the events and memories that had shaped his unconscious or conscious thoughts.
Therefore, every element in the story must mean something, and this paper especially intends
to see the relation between the characters, writing style, symbolism, and the theme of misery
and hope that was crucial during the struggle of the beginning to the middle of twentieth century.
Several studies about All Summer in a Day have been conducted. One study by Fanara
(2021) measures the morality of the characters and the effectiveness of this story to educate
children and parents. As Ray Bradbury has also mentioned in his interview with William F. Nolan
that his purpose of writing is to educate people about morality (Aggelis, 2003). He also said that
as a middle class, he wants to use this privilege to create a better society. Another study by
Bucur (2020) interprets this fiction as the journey of finding self-identity and struggling with
otherness.
 Most literary critics are fascinated by his other works such as Fahrenheit 451 and The
Martian Chronicles. However, literary studies around his short story fiction “All Summer in a
Day” are still very few and most focused on education and translation. Therefore, this paper is
going to analyze this prose from different perspectives, which sees this popular science fiction
from a psychoanalytic point of view.

Discussion
The short story "All Summer in a Day" contains many symbolism in the way the
characters are created, the settings and the plot are built, and the writing style of the writer.
These elements carry some hidden meaning that says something about the author’s mind which
has been complicated by the events that happened in his life.
Furthermore, since the form of the prose is science fiction, the depiction is not directly
portrayed as what it is in real life. For example, the settings of Venus, the rise of the sun, and
the never-stopping rain. They do not literally mean the physical form of a planet and natural
phenomenon, but they are representations to something else that actually exists and reachable.
The characters also play an important role in depicting the real story of what happened during
the twentieth century. They have different characteristics with distinguishing mind, thoughts,
motives, background, and therefore behavior. Each of them represents some individuals or a
certain group of people, and the conflict that they made also has a relation with those people in
real life.
Ray Bradbury wrote many stories about outer-space exploration, the imaginary of a
broken world or a broken society, and wars, even though not explicitly mentioned. In his novel,
The Martian Chronicles, he wrote a story about the settlement of Mars due to the nuclear war
that happened on Earth. This suggests that his space exploration story is caused by some
destruction created by humans. This plot is understandable due to the historical background of
constant wars that happened.
In All Summer in a Day, Bradbury did not mention the reasons people migrated from
Earth to Venus. It is only mentioned that some people decided to settle in Venus years ago. The
fact that they have schools and advanced technology just the same as on Earth indicates that
they are able to make civilization there. Given his position in his other space-exploration works,
it can be assumed that this settlement is due to some things that could not be easily fixed, and
therefore leaving it would give them a hope of a better living.
Ray Bradbury, intentionally or unintentionally, inputs some contradictory concepts in the
story, such as Earth and Venus, rain and sun, happy and sad. Connecting it to the time of the
Great Depression and postwar struggle, it can mean prosperity and suffering. Earth represents
the world which somehow is not anymore ideal to be lived. Venus represents the new world
which has its own challenge, and apparently not any better than Earth. Bucur (2020) found
many contradictory concepts in the story other than those mentioned, such as darkness and
light, coldness and warmth, color and lack of color, identity and otherness, and boys and girls.
These contrasts show the opposite concepts in real life, like happiness and sadness, and
misery and hope.
Imagining the days when the economy was unstable, people were killed in wars, poverty
was everywhere, people might start to think of a place where peace and happiness are
accessible. Constantly seeing humans fighting with each other contributes to their anxiety and
trauma. Therefore, no wonder that the kind of art or literature which could give them a sense of
“escape” entertained them. Going to another planet means going far away from Earth, and it
somehow gives an idea that everything there must be totally different from Earth, that perhaps a
better life is awaiting there.
Unfortunately, when they settled there and built a new civilization, they started to realize
that their expectations were unfulfilled. Their hope is just a hope. The new planet has some
shortcomings compared to Earth, like it rains every day and they did not get a chance to see the
sun as they used to get. When Margot got mocked and bullied by her classmates, it gives me a
sense that they also apparently couldn’t really escape from “wars”, because a war always exists
where humans live. It means that wherever they go, as long as humans are living there, there
will always be problems that they make. Humans are trouble-makers.
The word choices to describe the setting also emphasizes the misery that the characters
felt. For example, in describing Venus and the rain, Ray Bradbury uses some choices of words
that show no sign of a little happiness. He chose some words for describing the environment of
Venus, such as “concussion of storm so heavy”, “endless rain”, “tatting drum”, “forever rain”, “a
thousand of forest had been crushed”, and many more. This conveys a pessimistic attitude in
their lives, because it sounds like a hope cannot even get any place in their thoughts. It is
particularly intelligible remembering the times people and the author suffered during the
depression and World War II.
The character Margot also contributes to the theme of misery, in which she represents
an isolated and lost self. She is often shown isolated and stood apart from her peers, lost
excitement of playing, feeling numb, helpless, and spaced out from the present. Again, the
portrayal of this character’s behavior seems pessimistic. These emotions are common when
someone experiences constant unhappiness in their life, and in Margot’s case, it is probably
because of her distaste of her natural and social environments that could not fulfill her
expectations. She expected a comfortable environment which had the sun, and friends who
would listen to her.
Margot’s alienated feelings can be understood as the common malaise that people
experienced after the end of World War II (Jay, 2016). It is an effect of some historical events
such as poverty, violence, and inequality. Some modern sociologists such as Émile Durkheim,
Georg Simmel and Max Weber assumed that this feeling is also the result of
post-industrialization, and they refer to it as “tragedy of culture”. Martin Jay (2016) further
explained that estrangement happens when the self is dominated by others, which means that
one could not experience themselves as a whole because of others’ control over them.
Margot with her alienation represents those people living between the chaos of the world
in that postwar period. Ray Bradbury also stated that in his writing he wants to explore
American’s experience in general, and tries to separate it from the facts in his life. (Reid, 2000).
In contrast to the theme of misery, the sunrise is a hope or a miracle that is almost
impossible to imagine. Therefore, the elaboration of the sun is romanticized: beautiful, warm,
and energizing, especially by Margot who knew how the sun felt. Her talk about the sun is rather
dreamy and feels imaginative, it feels like it only exists in their mind.
For example, in paragraph 12, Bradbury described it as “they were dreaming and
remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with.” There is the
use of hyperbole in it, it shows how it is romanticized.
Other descriptions of the sun are put in the following paragraph:
About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. (p. 13)
I think the sun is a flower,That blooms for just one hour. (p. 13)
Even though this experience was real to Margot, it sounds unreal and like a daydream
for other children. Margot’s talk about the sun can be considered as an unreachable hope and
only remains as fantasy. Connecting it to the darkest era of the twentieth century, it is like giving
everyone a promise that this world will show a miracle, that they will find happiness, that there
will be a light at the end of the long dark tunnel. It is called a “miracle” because it is almost
impossible to achieve. Deep inside, people want it to be true, just like how the children were
dreaming about the sun in their sleeps. However, they keep refusing it because they think it is
too delusional, unrealistic, and impossible. This is just like how Margot’s peers keep saying that
Margot is lying about the sun.
Margot was the only one out of the class members who held the hope, and it is because
she had it pocketed when she experienced it on Earth. It is difficult to hold that hope even if she
has experienced it. The longer the memory came from, the more it feels unreal, the more one is
unsure if it ever happened at all. If it is hard for Margot, it is even harder for the other children
who never experienced the sun. This is what motivates them in hating and bullying Margot: they
did not know how to light a hope like that inside their heart just as Margot does.
Other evidence that explains how Margot represents hope is that she did not only have
the privilege of seeing the sun, but also having a “possible future”. The time Margot realized she
was not comfortable with Venus’ environment, her parents talked about the possibility of going
back to Earth, even though it costs a lot of money. The children hated that once again Margot
had a privilege of access to a better life, while they could not obtain it.
This difference may imply a different social class in a society. This difference creates a
conflict between one another. Even though the bullying of Margot’s classmates cannot be
normalized, this conflict can be understood because of the class difference that creates a gap
between one another. In the time of unstable economic conditions, such as during the Great
Depression, some people found difficulty in attending schools, getting work, and finding shelter.
Some people were fortunate enough to have better access, but some really struggled. Children
with their immature thinking may instantly feel jealous and threatened by the presence of
someone who gets something they could not achieve.
The class members’ action also symbolized that misery will always exist whenever
humans live. Previously, Margot and her family came to seek a better life in Venus, but,
apparently, they still found problems with natural shortcomings and human-made “disasters”.

Conclusion
Finally, it can be concluded that Ray Bradbury unconsciously built misery and hope in his
short story science fiction “All Summer in a Day.” The misery can be seen from the pessimistic
tone of describing Venus, the character Margot who is alienated, and Margot’s peers who could
not believe that good days will come. On the other hand, the belief of miracle can be seen from
the character Margot who talks about the sun or the possibility of hope in that doubtful phase.
These representations refer to the time period of darkness in the twentieth century such as the
event of the Great Depression and the post World War II which impacted society’s economy and
even a sense of wholeness and security.
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