Tired but Happy
After Douglas has his incredible revelation that he is alive, Bradbury writes, “The bees followed and the smell of fox grapes and yellow summer followed as he walked heavy-laden and half drunk, his fingers wondrously callused, arms numb, feet stumbling so his father caught his shoulder" (11). This image is both of the beauty of summer and of a child’s happy fatigue. It is moving and gentle, and indicative of the tone and content of the whole work.
Wine Production
The novel describes how dandelion wine is created. “So, plucked carefully, in sacks, the dandelions were carried below. The cellar dark glowed with their arrival. The wine press stood open, cold. A rush of flowers warmed it. The press, replaced, its screw rotated, twirled by Grandfather, squeezed gently on the crop. The golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ran, then gushed from the spout below, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom. Dandelion wine” (12). This image is important in understanding what life and happiness are made of, and the conclusion is that it is really simple things that we do with family and with all our heart.
Ravine
Dividing the town there is a ravine, and Bradbury gives this description of it: “Each night the wilderness, the meadows, the far country flowed down-creek through ravine and welled up in town with a smell of grass and water, and the town was disinhabited and dead and gone back to earth. And each morning a little more of the ravine edged up into town, threatening to swamp garages like leaking rowboats, devour ancient cars which had been left to the flaking mercies of rain and therefore rust" (17). It is depicted as a mysterious, beguiling, creepy, and powerful organism that is going to swallow the little town.
The Town
Tom thinks to himself, "...it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop" (37). This image shows how intimate Bradbury's novel is. Yes, the characters are incredibly small and probably inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but their story is moving and important and desperately beautiful.
