Dandelion Wine (1957)

As does the conductor of an orchestra, Douglas Spaulding, the protagonist of Dandelion Wine, directs the dawning of a new summer: “He pointed a finger . . . a sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.” The summer of Douglas’s 12th year is the subject of Bradbury’s most autobiographical work. Memories of Bradbury’s idyllic childhood fill the book, which takes place in Green Town, Illinois, during the summer of 1928.

Douglas’s home bustles with life and a cast of characters: parents, grandparents, great- grandparents, boarders—a community of diverse personalities. The narrative memorializes the past and depicts the process of restoring Bradbury’s memories. The firstborn, Douglas, has a younger brother, Tom. Although Douglas is the principal explorer and the subject of the novel is his own discovery, it is through Tom that Bradbury remembers his feelings of admiration for an older brother, “even when that brother ditched him” (Bradbury ix).

As does Bradbury, Douglas loves movies like The Phantom of the Opera and walking home by the ravine at night with his friends. He begins writing early in life. Though Douglas’s writing differs from Bradbury’s own early stories, Douglas records the summer, chronicling what he calls “Rites and Ceremonies” and reflecting on them in a second part, “Discoveries and Revelations.” At the same time, Douglas becomes profoundly aware of existence, his own life, and eventually develops a concept of death. Dandelion Wine portrays a child losing his innocence; throughout the text Douglas transitions from child to adolescent in a community swirling in the cycle of life.

While Douglas writes, his grandfather bottles wine from the dandelions growing on the wide lawn, a bottle for every day of summer. The wine is a metaphor: As Douglas’s writing does, the wine preserves things and represents the passing of time. Douglas finds, however, that the bottles do not always match his recollections—sometimes shining brighter with happy memories or other times producing dark, cloudy wine on days that were sad. Unlike Douglas’s writing, the wine’s preservation is temporary, stocked for the following winter to lend a little warmth to the cold seasons. It will need to be remade as the memory of the summer days fades.

Douglas’s grandfather cautions him of this; memories, like the wine bottles, will be replaced with new ones and those days become a blur, with one or two unusual moments standing out. Tom insists that he can hold on to every day; Douglas has begun to realize the passing of memory this summer. The dandelion, the harvest, the bottling and later drinking of the wine symbolize the cyclical nature of the seasons and the passing of time.

Memory functions as a motif—an idea or image that recurs throughout the text. It not only recurs in Dandelion Wine, but runs throughout Bradbury’s works, a sign of preoccupation with preserving the past. Douglas and his friends dub Colonel Freeleigh a “Time Machine” because he tells them stories that delve into his memories and send the children back through time. Fascinated by Freeleigh’s stories, the children sense their importance; the tales feed the children’s imaginations and enlarge their worldview.

Machines serve as antagonizing elements in the text. Yet, although they resist the passing of time, they eventually succumb to time and use and wear down as they age. The neighbor, Lou Huffman, tries to make a Happiness Machine but ultimately realizes that family provides more happiness that any external structure. The Green Machine, an electric motorcar, symbolizes technology and its dangers. The elderly ladies who own it, Miss Fern and Miss Roberta, have an accident and believe they have killed a man. Here the past, represented by the old ladies, and the new age of technology intersect. The women decide never to use the Green Machine again, and the issue is put to rest; the town trolley, another symbol of the past, is taken off its tracks to make way for a new and faster bus system. Even the Time Machine, Colonel Freeleigh, passes away, though his family tries to protect him, and Douglas’s group laments the loss of his valuable memories.

Bradbury transforms the often-troublesome dandelion weed into a symbol of life itself, creating a fantastic story out of everyday, ordinary elements. Here, the author infuses magic into an otherwise realistic tale. Dandelion Wine describes the wonder of discovery and imagination: Douglas’s changing, ever-expanding view of the world. Even when the point of view shifts to the minds of adults, his voice remains; the story is filtered through Douglas’s consciousness. Douglas’s obsession with the tarot card witch at the traveling carnival show illustrates both his and Bradbury’s obsession with enchantment.

While the carnival is a rundown place with an alcoholic manager, Douglas believes it houses a gypsy fortune-teller in the body of an old wax witch. He thinks that if he can only set her free, through spells and potions found in the library, she will give him a fortune: “It’ll say we’ll live forever, you and me, Tom, we’ll live forever.” Similarly, Douglas believes in a magical cure for the illness that strikes him late in the story, a sickness that occurs after his many revelations.

Douglas’s friend Mr. Jonas, the junkman, has bottles of air from exotic places in the past that cool and revive Douglas. After breathing in the aromatic vapors, Douglas is restored, and his family notices the “scent of cool night and cool water and cool snow” on his breath. There is room here to interpret that the magic occurs not only in Douglas’s mind but also in the collective conscious of the family and, to a larger degree, the town. If such conjuring were an accepted part of the characters’ lives, it could be called magical realism, a literary term used for describing texts where unrealistic elements emerge from otherwise realistic stories. Dandelion Wine, however, deals largely with fantasy, infusing imagination into an idyllic world that, although placed in a realistic setting, does not attempt to represent the political and historical realities that can be associated with such magical realist writers as Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Isabel Allende.

Dandelion Wine deals with realities we cannot express with scientific explanations, the metaphysical, fantastical elements of our lives: existence, time, memory, death. The more Douglas becomes aware of being alive, the more he experiences loss. Throughout the summer Douglas suffers varying degrees of loss, from the death of his great-grandmother to the relocation of his best friend, John Huff. Douglas tries to deny the existence of loss, distracting himself with the tarot, but eventually faces the inexplicable, temporary nature of our lives and our ultimate powerlessness over time when he is struck with illness. Miraculously, though, as the summer ends, Douglas still holds on to life’s magical qualities and continues to see the world as a place of limitless possibilities.

The story ends as new school supplies appear in store windows and Grandpa Spaulding takes the porch swing off the porch for the year. The novel concludes as Douglas looks to the next summer, which will be “even bigger, nights will be longer and darker, more people dying, more babies born, and me in the middle of it.” With all of its revelations and surprises; its emphasis on growth, imagination, and wonder, the novel ends as it begins, in the third-story cupola bedroom of Douglas’s grandparents’ house as he puts the town to bed, “and sleeping, put an end to summer.”

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Compare and contrast Dandelion Wine with Bradbury’s short story “The Man Upstairs,” a work that also takes place in Green Town, Illinois.

2. The ravine is a strong figure in the story that represents a challenge to various characters. Discuss the symbolism of the ravine and the way it functions in Douglas’s life. Contrast this to Miss Lavinia’s experiences there.

3. Research the year 1928 and consider why Bradbury set the novel during the summer of this year. Consult a general reference source or a reliable Web site such as http://www.infoplease.com/ year/1928.html.

4. Using an encyclopedia or trustworthy Web site such as http://www.raybradbury.com/index. html, evaluate why Bradbury’s works have been so popular. What themes do they contain that make them appealing? What is it about Bradbury’s style that draws such a large readership?

5. Both Dandelion Wine and John Knowles’s A Separate Peace are coming-of-age stories in which the novels’ protagonists come to terms with loss. Write an essay comparing the two works and the ways the protagonist in each copes with and eventually begins to understand loss.

Works Cited and Additional Resources:
Aggelis, Steven L. Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

Aldiss, Brian W. Trillion Year Spree. New York: Avon Books, 1988, 247-248.
Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York: Arno Press, 1975, 105-113.

Attebery, Brian. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, 133-141.

Bloom, Harold. Writers of English: Lives and Works Modern Fantasy Writers. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.
Bradbury, Ray. The Stories ofRay Bradbury. Knopf, New York: New York, 1980.

Brians, Paul. “Study Guide for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.” Dr. Paul Brians’ Home Page. Washington State University. Available online. URL: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fic- tion/martian_chronicles.html. Accessed June 11, 2006