DANDELION WINE Response

1.) Bradbury's metaphor of a bottle of wine is a metaphor of keeping memories alive but bottled up. This is a reoccurring theme in this set of vignettes. One example is how Douglas and Tom record everything that they've ever done so that they could remember that certain memory whenever they wanted. Bradbury wanted to get the point across that you shouldn't forget.

2.) Leo Auffman's attempt at making artificial happiness, the Happiness Machine, is a total failure. His family goes through grief after he has made the machine. The author also makes reference to a sadness machine. the sadness machine teaches a very important message, that if you try to make something that is impossible, artificial emotions for example, it will backfire. Humans decide for themselves what they want to feel.

3.) The ravine is an important aspect of the story. It is a metaphor for the battleground between humans and nature. It shows an untamed, wild side of nature.

4.) Mrs. Bentley, a sad old widow who is convinced by little girls that she was never a child. She then refuses that she never had a past, that she was always an elderly woman. I believe that this is wrong. You shouldn't deny your past, you learn to many important lessons. This book's whole message is to remember and never to forget.

5.) I don't believe that the record book is a good reflection of what they really learn. They actually learn to remember and the significance of each other and the world, not when the first caught spiders and ate pie.

6.) The Lonely One is a serial killer. His function in the novel is to induce fear in the everyday lives of the characters. Livinia Nebbs does kill him but Douglas does not want to believe it because he needed something to believe in.

7.) I believe that Douglas has a heat stroke because it is in the middle of Summer. The Junk dealer
cures him by giving him two puffs of air.

8.)I believes that it physically ends, but it never ends in Douglas' mind. He will always be a child playing in the fields with his little brother Tom in the summer of 1928.