All Summer in a Day

Our class recently had to read the short story All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury. After reading this story we were tasked to answer a few questions about parts of the story.

Find three words you don't know the meaning of. Look them up and write the definitions.

Tumultuously - This adverb having to do with disorganisation and being loud in general. If you were to describe something, like a storm, for example, it would be like this,

The storm raged on tumultuously, disturbing the peaceful lives with battering winds and threatening strikes of lightning.

(There were no other words I didn't know so I just took some random ones.)

Dimly - Another adverb, the word dimly is to do with a faint light, for example,

The lantern glowed dimly, providing next to no light in the midnight black hall.

Repercussions - This noun means the consequences after an action, it is often a bad one. Here's an example,

The move he had made would have repercussions, for everyone.

Discuss the exposition of the story, who are the characters? What are the setting and mood?

The story is about a young girl named Margot who lives on the planet, Venus, where it rains for seven years before the planet sees merely an hour of sunlight. Margot is nine years old and unlike her classmates, she remembered seeing the sun five years ago, before she and her family moved to Venus from Earth.

Besides Margot, there are no other named characters, though there are Margot's classmates and her teacher. I suspect that one of the classmate's names are William, as the teacher mentions the name when she tells a student off.
The setting is Venus, where it rains and rains for seven years until the sun will show itself for an hour or so. Most of the civilians, descendants of the humans from Earth, live in underground networks. They rarely go outside into the rain, but once the sun comes out you can see the immense amount of greenery and forest that covers Venus.
The mood is excitable and emotional, with anger showing itself easily in Margot's fellow classmates, but the children quickly switch the mood of the story once the sun shows itself, the children happy and laughing, until of course, they realise, they left Margot in the closet.

List and label one metaphor, one similie and one example of sensory language.

Metaphors are visible in this small part of the story,

It had been raining for seven years; thousands upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands.

The multiple metaphors include the piece that says 'Storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands.' It is a metaphor that compares the storms and rains to the heaviness of a tidal wave.

The simile I was able to find in the story is a bit long, but stick with me for a moment,

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a beautiful tropical slide which did not move or tremor.

I believe the simile is at the very beginning where it states, 'it was as if, in the midst of a film,' here it relates the stopping of the rain to a pause before a dramatic happening in a movie.

The sensory language example I am able to provide is this one,

The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces; they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion.

Here it describes the laughter of joy and the fresh air the children were finally able to surround themselves with after so many years. Instead of 'they looked at the sun.' they told us 'they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces.' This is important because it draws the reader in more than the simple 'they looked at the sun.' because it explains the feelings of the children and helps the reader envision the scene.