Grandpa Spaulding: Quote Analysis

To Grandpa Spaulding, summer is a time of youthfulness, life, and rejuvenation. Whether it’s through cutting the summer grass, his childlike imagination running wild, or making dandelion wine (an embodiment of summer), summertime gives Grandpa a new found youthful energy. In this first quote, Grandpa wakes up on the first day of summer, lawn mowing day, he then proceeds to cut his grass. “He lay quietly listening, and the smile was explained … A fount leaped up from the chattering mower … tickling his legs, filling his nostrils with the timeless scent of a new season begun, with the promise, yes, we’ll all live another 12 months.” (Bradbury 51)In this quote Grandpa’s lawn mower, along with the small beautiful things in summer, assure him he is not

If Grandpa were to be doubting his life expectancy, he would have this dilemma in the colder months. This means that it was the summer’s warm embrace that made him feel youthful and exuberant. Using the following quote Ray Bradbury does a great job at showing that Grandpa only feels young and full of life during the summer months. “This [dandelion wine] carried to every miserable room upstairs-and-down would be … the medication of another time.” (Bradbury 15) Perhaps the most paramount elements of this quote are that this takes place during the first few days of summer, it is the first time Grandpa has made dandelion wine this summer, and the fact that dandelion wine is the embodiment of summer. Knowing all of this, we can assume that every room was “miserable” and lifeless for the winter months until the house was introduced to the symbol of Grandpa’s summer, and thus youth. The line “medication of another time” also implies that winter is like an illness that strikes Grandpa, and he needs to drink some of his summer youth in order to be rejuvenated. Through physical dandelion wine Ray Bradbury shows that summer itself keeps Grandpa feeling