"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury

In "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury, the force of mob mentality forces one young girl to miss the event of her life. Margot is a nine-year-old girl who lives on Venus, where it rains constantly for seven years at a time, until for one hour the sun comes out. She looks forward to this day for every day of her life, and finally, it comes. However, there is a problem. Margot is an outcast in her class at school. She is very quiet and the other kids do not like her. When they are all excited about the sun coming out, she tells them about how she remembers the sun from when she used to live on earth, and the other children become angry in their excitement. All of the children lock Margot in the closet and forget about her when the sun does come out. At the end, they all feel guilty that they made her miss the sun. Mob mentality is a concept that when there is a large group of people they will all do the same thing. This is demonstrated by the class of children who lock Margot in the closet. The story specifically mentions a heap of reasons that the kids "hated" Margot. After the reasons Bradbury writes, "And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence." This shows that although the reasons the children had for hating her weren't really of much consequence, when all of the kids banded together, their hate was multiplied. After one of the boys shoves her around some more, the children rally around him and push her into the closet. This is demonstrated in this 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." When the kids have bundled their hate together, it seems to them like they aren't doing anything wrong. However, at the end of the story they realize their mistake as they let Margot our of the closet. The children are naive enough to be able to do this, but at the same time, they eventually realize what they have done. Ray Bradbury uses these examples of mob mentality to show that we should try to resist mob mentality so no one ends up getting hurt. This is a powerful message that shines through in the story and definitely makes an impact on the reader.