Dandelion Wine Paper Essay Example

Everyone enjoys the summertime. In Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, Douglas Spaulding, a twelve-year-old boy, wakes up the town to summer. A few days into summer, he suddenly realizes his existence and livelihood. Not merely existing and taking up space, Douglas notices his surroundings and slowly begins to understand life. How to manage and control one’s life on earth exists as one of the main issues Doug faces. He struggles in finding how to live life and using his time on earth to his full advantage. In Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, the motif of time shows the struggle between life and death, serves as an object of change, and reinforces one’s short time on earth, suggesting that quality trumps quantity. The struggle between life and death exists throughout this novel. In the middle of summer, John Huff tells his best friend Doug that he is moving away. Doug then “freezes” John during a child’s game in an attempt to stop him from leaving. Doug’s actions represent the process that many people perform in order to slow down death. On the other hand, John acknowledges that he must leave and readily accepts his own personal death. He realizes his time to go has arrived and walks away with his head held high. Just like John, other people in Green Town accept their fate and simply continue on with life. Bradbury says in relation to the battle between people and pesky mosquitoes: “The mosquitoes were gone from the porch, and surely when they abandoned the conflict the war with Time was really done, there was nothing for it but that humans also forsake the battleground” (237). The battle between the mosquitoes and humans compares to the battle between life and death. Once humans give up the battle of fighting death in order to “live” longer, they will truly start to live by smelling flowers, climbing trees, and noticing the color of a loved one’s eyes. Quality time and quantity time serve as two types of time, and the choice of quality or quantity endures.