Dandelion Wine Essay

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 â€Å"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: â€Å"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 â€Å"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. Peoples’ attitudes and perspectives change considerably over time. Helen Loomis tells William Forrester of her gladness for the fact that he did not see her at the age of twenty, for she acted foolish and unwise. With age and elapsed time, she matures and becomes an influential speaker in the present. Grandpa Spaulding also modifies his recollection of events as he ages. He tells Doug and Tom that â€Å"you’ll find as you get older the days kind of blur . . . can’t tell one from the other. † (237). Grandpa does remember one event: William Forrester attempting to convince him to plant â€Å"cut-less† grass. Quality memories that are truthly important to someone will be remembered more than many unimportant, insignificant ones, as shown in this memory. Contrarily, time influences events and changes them in a circular way, where each step repeats but sometimes without Doug’s approval. The cycle of the type of shoes Doug wears develops this idea. Every summer, Doug buys a new pair of tennis shoes and wears them until early September. Next, he wears iron leather shoes all winter and at the beginning of summer, he runs barefoot for a time before buying new tennis shoes. The time of year influences his shoe selection and changes his choice of what to wear. Although, the season when he wears each shoe type remains constant, year to year. Doug believes his choice of shoes changes, but the sequence of selections remains constant. Similarly, the production of dandelion wine appears different day to day to Doug because of the unique events of the day, yet all the wine tastes essentially the same. â€Å"He saw the other numbered bottles waiting there, one like another, in no way different, all bright, all regular, all self-contained. There’s the day I found I was alive, he thought, and why isn’t it brighter than the others? . . . Did the wine remember? It did not! Or seemed not, anyway† (138). When the wine is made means nothing, because the quality of each batch remains the same. Time can change events or people by developing them into something new. Humans do not have much time on earth, so their time must be of quality. One of these principles says that one should live life to the fullest. Colonel Freeleigh loves calling to Mexico City and listening to the city’s sounds. Colonel Freeleigh disobeys the nurse and calls back to Mexico. He wants to die doing the thing he enjoys most and gladly accepts death as it envelopes him while listening to one of the few things that keeps him alive. Likewise, using tobacco remains harmful and bad, yet some people chew it for the enjoyment and satisfaction. Bradbury writes, describing the scene â€Å"In front of the United Cigar Store this evening the men were gathered to burn dirigibles, sink battle ships, blow up dynamite works and, all in all, savor the very bacteria in their porcelain mouths that would some day stop them cold† (33). These men realize the side effects of using tobacco, yet they would rather enjoy a few more years of life with tobacco rather than a few more years without it. The good times hardly ever last for as long as one would want them to, so one must live life to the fullest. Calendars and clocks only divide time into equal and smaller portions, yet everyone knows that some time periods pass quicker than others. The summer comes and goes quickly, so Doug documents it by recording each event as either a new discovery or a past ceremony. Other times of the year slip by and Doug takes little interest in them. Once again, time influences how one acts during the short periods of great enjoyment, especially the little time one is â€Å"living† here on earth. Time creates a sense of urgency that sometimes pressures people into actions they would have avoided. Time also may assist one in finding the true way of living. Without the realization that time is of the essence in Dandelion Wine, Douglas’ discovery of the important struggle between life and death or that over time people change and mature would have not occured. With that said, is Douglas too young to understand these universal ideas? Does he truly grasp the notion of quality over quantity by the end of this book? In Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, the motif of time shows the struggle between life and death, and considering that one’s time on earth is short, quality trumps quantity.