IN-CLASS ONLINE LESSON #2

Re-read Ray Bradbury's story "All Summer in a Day." In your blog, identify who should be held responsible for Margot's treatment, and why.

I feel that William should be held responsible for Margot's treatment. William was the one to have always gone against Margot, from when he refused to believe that Margot wrote her own poem about the Sun, to the fact that they would ever see the Sun again. When the teacher was not around, William took the chance to sort of bully Margot, pushing her around and finally leading everyone to put Margot in the closet.

When the Sun really came out in the end, no one ever thought of Margot, little did William know that while him and the other schoolchildren were enjoying the once-in-seven-years Sun, Margot was rotting away in the closet.

Then (in the same entry) imagine yourself as one of the schoolchildren; what might you have chosen to do which would have led to a positive outcome?

Of course the easiest thing I could have done was to just release Margot from the closet or prevent her from being put into it by William in the first place, but then comes the question if I am able to stand against the other schoolchildren myself.

Even then, there are many things that I could have done for Margot such that there would be a positive outcome. I could be the one to tell the teacher when she arrives so that she might release Margot just in time for everyone to see the Sun. Then after thinking through this again, I thought that this would not really be a positive outcome, as William and the others might bear a grudge against me and Margot, and this might lead to some nasty concequences in the future.

Then I could also wait for everyone to run out to enjoy the Sun to release Margot, but then I would be missing some of it myself, and the Sun would only be out for two hours!

Alternatively, I could do what happened in the short film version of this short story; I could pick some flowers and give it to Margot after the Sun sets, and tell her what it was like, but then Margot would not be able to see the Sun herself.

So basically what I am trying to say here is that there would be no outcome that is certainly positive, although the three outcomes that I stated above are all much more "positive" then what actually happens in the short story, where Margot did not get to experience any part of the Sun at all.