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 …show more content…

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 “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