Monday, December 17, 2012

Bullying

Author's Note: I wrote this to show my understandings of a theme. Also to show that I can apply my knowledge of theme to other books.

Picture moving from earth only to live on Venus where there is no sunshine other than the time here it stops raining and the sun comes out for two wondrous hours. In the short story, “All Summer In A Day,” by Ray Bradbury, the main character is constantly bullied and teased by her classmates for being different and knowing what the sun actually looks like.  Then her classmates play a terrible trick on her and lock her in a closet the two hours the sun was supposed to come out and forgot to let her out when the sun came out so she missed it. Bullying is a major theme in this story, as well as other stories, for several reasons.

When Margot moved with her family from Earth to Venus, her classmates bullied her because she was different than they are. When the Author, Ray Bradbury, said, “They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future,”  it really shows how her classmates judged her because she was different than them.  This quote proves how cruel her classmates were to her, only because she’d been lucky enough to remember the sun and that she would soon go back to Earth where she could see it for days and days.

Margot’s classmates didn’t like her because she was different and this led to the constant bullying that Margot received daily. Although all the bullying and teasing that her classmates did to her, there was one instance that really proves how bullying was the main theme. The quote, “They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door,” describes when her classmates were so horribly cruel to her and locked her up in a closet for the two hours the sun would be out for the next seven years. When they did this it really proved to me how bullying was so significant in this short story.

The book,  What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by  Sonya Sones shares the same theme of bullying as “All Summer in A Day” had as well.  What My Mother Doesn’t Know is your typical beauty and the beast story and consists a popular boy and a bullied and tormented guy, Murphy. The popular girl falls for him and she realizes how much people bully him. So she begins  wonder if she wants to associated with him and bullied the way he is. A quote that bests describes the theme is “When someone at school acts like a dork the other kids say, What a Murphy.” The quote shows how Murphy has just become a joke at school and everyone bullies him. Something that connects these two stories, besides theme is Margot and Robin are both outcasts and are constantly being made fun of and put down because of looks, or where they’re from.

Not only does What My Mother Doesn’t Know share the same theme of bullying as “All summer in a Day,” but the book Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson has that same theme also.  When everyone gangs up on Melinda and leaves her without a friend or anyone for her to talk to about what really happened to her,  it really proves that the main theme is bullying. “All Summer In A Day,” not only shares the same theme as Speak, but it also shares the same struggles that the main characters go through when they have no friends to talk to about anything. 

It doesn’t matter if you live on Venus or if you live here on earth, bullying can happen anywhere. It takes ignoring people, physically hurting someone and making up your mind about someone before you get to know them to be a bully. Once you learn to recognize the signs of bullying and what it takes to be a bully, you can reduce the amount of bullying that goes on around you. For several meanings a major theme in the short story, “All Summer In A Day,” by Ray Bradbuy and many other books is bullying. 

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