All Summer in a Day: Literary Style and Figures of Speech

All Summer in a Day: Literary Style and Figures of Speech

Literary Style

Science fiction

All Summer in a Day is a science fiction story. The action of the story takes place on an entirely different planet and incorporates futuristic concepts such as space travel. The author presents. to us an entirely fictional world that has some basis in reality.

Figures of speech

Like in his other stories, Bradbury has generously used figures of speech, especially similes and metaphors, in this story as well.

Metaphor

For example, here the author indirectly compares the sound of the falling raindrops to the sound of a drum and of beads falling on a roof.

But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone.

In this line, Margot is indirectly compared to an old photograph.

She was an old photograph dusted from an album.

Simile

Here are some examples of similes or direct comparisons.

The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds,

intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun.

All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a

lemon it was.

They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor.

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Hyperbole

In this line the author has used hyperbole, that is, exaggeration, to underscore how dreadful the rain on Venus was.

A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again.