AP Essay: All Summer in a Day

1.      Writers often highlight the values of a culture or a society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a play or novel in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions and moral values.

What if you had never seen the sun? If you had never felt it’s warmth on your face, if you had only seen thunderstorms and endless amounts rain pouring down from the sky, would you believe the sun existed? All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury, script by Hoggard's honors drama class, depicts this situation.

Margot is isolated and bullied because of her differences. She came from Earth to Venus when she was young. Unlike the indigenous Venusians’, Margot remembers the earth. She remembers it’s warmth and beauty, and how it is “The color of flaming bronze.” Margot, the protagonist, is optimistic about the sun’s “emergence” on Venus for the first time in 10 years.

The people on Venus are cold, cruel people. The local children even bully Margot, because she is so different than the rest of them. She is literally an “alien” to them, because she was born on a different planet. The children’s lack of sun contrasts with Margot’s remembrance of it. Since Margot’s arrival on Venus, she has become washed out like the others, but she has not let that affect her enthusiasm. Her spirit remains, even when it should have been broken long ago. She continually fights and attempts to stand up for herself and is knocked down over and over again. But in the end it just isn’t enough.