The children are jealous of Margot because she is from Earth and she has seen the sun.
The story takes place in some future time where Earthlings have somehow managed to travel to other planets and colonize them. One of these colonies is on Venus. Bradbury’s vision of Venus is a planet where it rains constantly. The incessant rain really gets to people. It is particularly hard for the children, because they do not remember seeing the sun. They were too young when it last came out.
Margot is nine years old. She is different from the other kids, because she is from Earth. On Earth, apparently, the sun still comes out. Margot desperately misses the sun. She wants to go back to Earth in the worst way.
Not only does Margot miss the sun, but she does not get along with the other children. They are jealous of her, and think she is weird because she keeps herself apart from them. She doesn’t fit in, and doesn’t try to.
Whenever Margot is mentioned, she is described as being alone and apart from the other kids.
She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.
The children are excited because the sun is about to come out for the first time in seven years. This means the other children were just two years old when it last emerged, and of course they do not remember it. For this reason, they are even more stirred up. Just as the sun is about to come out, they decide to play a trick on Margot. They lock her in the closet.
It is not clear if the children really intended for Margot to miss the sun’s brief appearance. However, that is what happened. They got all excited about the sun and left her. The teacher was apparently none the wiser. By the time the rain started again, the children were horrified at what they had done.
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