Fiction. Novel: Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury, Bantam

¶ … fiction." Novel: "Dandelion Wine" Ray Bradbury, Bantam publish. 1976. Please thesis statement: Summer a time joy Douglas (Spaulding) embraces nature, spends time family, experiences suspense magic Summer days.

Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine is a catalyst novel, written in such a manner that it allowed and encouraged the author to transcend memories and be sent back into past in times of summer. Bradbury's source of inspiration for the novel was his own childhood and the action in the story surrounds 12-year-old boy Douglas Spaulding living in a fictional small town in America. For Douglas, summer is a time of joy because he embraces nature, spends time with family, and experiences suspense and magic of summer days. In the following, we will address the experiencing of summer in the novel and ?the joy of embracing nature in summertime.

The summer of 1928 surprises Douglas while at his grandparents' house and it embellishes him with anticipations of plucking ripening fruits, diving into rivers, and climbing trees. The 12-year-old becomes aware of his own aliveness one ?special day? while out in the forest with his father and his brother, Tom. By walking into a spider's web, Douglas is able to tell that there is something different about the day. The ?grass whispering under his body? reinforces the boy's belief that something special has happened. Thus, nature acts upon the boy by catalysis to bring about his awakening and sense of existence. This is why the experiencing of summer in the novel is, for Douglas, of doubled significance. It preserves the routine joys of a child like bathing in the rivers and it introduces the philosophical perspective of what it means to experience life in awakened consciousness of the senses. And nature's resources in summertime are the instruments by which Douglas becomes deeply immersed into his aliveness. The boy's self-awareness is pictured by the author in a natural setting so as to imply that Douglas' connection with life is evidenced by how he experiences nature in summertime.

Infused with powerful sensations, Douglas perceives dandelion flowers within a new frame of perspective. They become the symbolic connotation for an ever lasting summer season. Once the flowers undergo the process of distillation, the words of dandelion wine become more than just descriptive. Indeed, for Douglas, ?the words were summer on the tongue. As the boy perceives through his new senses, dandelion wine is to carry with it the fragrance of summer throughout all of the seasons, even the cruelest of them all, the unforgivable winter. Moreover, in a single bottle, Douglas understands he will be able to find the joys of summertime.

Douglas' connection with nature is evidenced by how he compares the banal necessities of a boy like buying a new pair of tennis shoes with sensations of ?wading in the slow waters of the creek and seeing your feet below? For the first time every summer season. The joy of purchasing new shoes is ritualistic in the novel much like the making of dandelion wine. Moreover, new shoes are associated with replenishment and love of nature. This simple joy of one summer ritual allows Douglas to feel like an antelope, moving swiftly along with the season.