AE: Prose Dylan G. Williams – Lesson 3
Understanding Details
1. Grandfather, in this essay, is an authority figure by virtue of age and
position in the family, whereas Douglas is his devoted apprentice,
learning life’s rituals under the tutelage of the master. Douglas
seems to be carrying on the traditions that Grandfather helped
create. Douglas’s youth adds vitality to this family and its customs.
The reader is left with the feeling that someday Douglas will appear
on that same porch with his own grandson at his side to test the
wind of a summer day and see if the time is right to hang the frontporch swing.
2. The most important feature of Douglas’s house is a large front
porch, its generous dimensions suggested by the “other chairs,
rockers and straight-backs” (para. 6) dragged onto the porch for
their summer sojourn. While the author describes “the geraniumpot-lined rail” (para. 2), “the delicate ferns that bordered the porch
on three sides” (para. 11), and the “immense oaks and elms” (para.
8) that lined the streets of the small town, he makes no specific
reference to the number of trees and bushes surrounding this
particular house. Likewise, other details, such as the color and style
of the old house, must be drawn from the reader’s imagination and
experience.
Analyzing Meaning
1. For Douglas’s family, the front-porch ritual represents continuity, not
only of family traditions, but of society as they know it.
2. Summer for Douglas was a time of ceremonies: “the ritual of
lemonade or ice-tea making, the ritual of wine, shoes, or no shoes”
(para. 1), “the lighting of pipes, the pale hands that moved knitting
needles in the dimness, the eating of foil-wrapped, chill Eskimo Pies,
the coming and going of all the people” (para. 13). To Douglas and
his family, these rites represent the salvation of a habitual way of life
in a continually changing world.
3. Descriptive phrases evoking visual images might include “black
water being poured over the houses” (para. 11) and “the mosscovered rain barrel” (para. 12). The phrase “stream of murmurings”
(para. 12) elicits an aural response, while a sense of feeling comes
with “pontifical weight” (para. 5) and “cooling-warm kitchen” (para.
9).
Discovering Rhetoric
3. Bradbury tells his story very effectively from the third-person
objective point of view with a focus upon Douglas. This perspective
presents a more complete, although innocent, picture than Douglas,
Grandfather, or the women would tell. From any one of these
standpoints, such issues as the excitement of the moment, one’s
duty to tradition, or the injustice of role expectations might have
overshadowed the focus on the ritual itself. Although the reader
must be aware that the narrator of a story does not always reflect
the point of view of the author, the fact that Bradbury’s middle
name is “Douglas” as well as that the relationship between the boy
and his grandfather is warm and loving suggests that this nostalgic
vignette might be drawn to some extent from the personal life of
the author.
Conclusive Remarks
The story as a whole seemed to give off an idea that it was an
entirely subjective story. However, he starts off by giving an
objective description of summer rituals, and ending the sentence by
identifying his specific summer ritual. Furthermore, he gave
objective descriptions of the neighbors as they passed by his frontporch swing. There was also a strong mix of subjective descriptions
when it came to describing the other events that were happening
during his peaceful summer ritual. One such example would be
when he says, "It wasn't important to anyone what the adults talked
about; it was only important that the sounds came and went",
which is primarily his own opinion and would not necessarily be a
shared opinion by the adults.
In "Summer Rituals" Ray Bradbury argues that family rituals are
significant, specifically to the children, and should not be done away
with. To sustain this argument, he uses an approach through pathos
where he tries to entice the reader with the same overwhelming
feeling of calmness and peacefulness that he himself experienced
during his summer rituals as a child. He also organized his narrative
as a chronological analysis of his summer ritual, such that the reader
also formed a mental reminiscence of the memory.
To recreate his experience as vividly as possible for the reader, he
uses comparisons, that enhance the sensory details, in the forms of
similes and metaphors like "the moths, like late appleblossoms
come alive" and "having left his horse and wagon hidden in the
alley, and ripe to bursting with words, would come up the steps
looking as fresh as if his talk had never been said before".
To me the last paragraph would be the strongest since it gives one
final review of the day and how the different things happening
around the front-door porch gave such a relaxing feel to his summer
ritual.
References
http://www.squidoo.com/summerrituals