All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury Imagery Essay

In the short story “All Summer in a Day”, the author Ray Bradbury uses sensory imagery such as sight and sound to describe the setting of his version of planet Venus and to describe the children. He then uses the absence of sensory imagery when describing Margot to create contrast which helps us understand the idea that people who are different are ostracised and hated.
With the use of sensory imagery, Ray Bradbury paints a picture in our minds of how the planet Venus in his story looks and sounds like. He describes this planet where it “…had been raining for seven years…” as the sound and look of “…tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the rood, the walk, the gardens, the forest…” This tells us that the rain sounds like a constant drum beat and by how it is like falling beads we can also imagine that it would be quite a snare drum with a distinctive shattering sound that catches everyone’s attention for a marching band. Visually we can imagine transparent droplets falling one after the other everywhere without a break just like what would happen if a necklace of translucent crystal beads broke and the beads fell to the ground and shattered. With this use of sensory imagery Ray Bradbury lets us know how loud and constant the sound is on Venus and how there is movement at all times.
The children the story are described with sensory imagery to show them as loud, restless, uncontrollable and almost always together. “The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed…” and this shows us that they are all bunched up close together with each other competitive and impatient, wanting to be the first to finally see the sun and that like weeds they cannot be controlled as they move to their own free will. He supports this idea by saying “They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes”, showing us that they are always like this, moving quickly in a fidgety manner trying to be better than