We will all die. Everything we know now is terminal. The summer of 1928 is a time in which Douglas, the main character in Dandelion Wine, must come to terms with the fundamental fact that he and all the things around him are temporary. The novel is an account of Douglas’s growth in awareness of mortality and the inevitability of death and loss through his experiences of losing many of the people and things that he had previously believed to be constants. In the novel, the author uses the characters Douglas and Mrs. Bentley to demonstrate the theme of struggle to accept change over the course of one’s life.
Throughout the book, Douglas has an intense resistance toward change during a time in his life when he is being exposed to it more than …show more content…
Bentley’s battle was within herself, to accept the changes that she had gone through in her own life. To accept the fact that she was no longer the same person that she had been years ago. 72 year old Mrs. Bentley was ever living in the past, saving old pictures and memories rather than living in the present. After a series of surreal interactions with a set of children, Mrs. Bentley is led to the realization that she was never the young girl in the pictures, that she is and always has been the person that she is today. “You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back.” (Bradbury, pg. 75) It may seem absurd to say that you are not your past self, but what Bradbury is trying to say is that we cannot cling to what we used to be because that will only lead us to focus on the past rather than the present or the future. There is no pointing in trying to enshrine the past because, as Mrs. Bentley realizes, “‘No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.’”(Bradbury, pg. 75) Mrs. Bentley serves to teach the reader that it is futile to cling onto the person that one once was and that one must embrace personal change despite its daunting
Throughout the book, Douglas has an intense resistance toward change during a time in his life when he is being exposed to it more than …show more content…
Bentley’s battle was within herself, to accept the changes that she had gone through in her own life. To accept the fact that she was no longer the same person that she had been years ago. 72 year old Mrs. Bentley was ever living in the past, saving old pictures and memories rather than living in the present. After a series of surreal interactions with a set of children, Mrs. Bentley is led to the realization that she was never the young girl in the pictures, that she is and always has been the person that she is today. “You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back.” (Bradbury, pg. 75) It may seem absurd to say that you are not your past self, but what Bradbury is trying to say is that we cannot cling to what we used to be because that will only lead us to focus on the past rather than the present or the future. There is no pointing in trying to enshrine the past because, as Mrs. Bentley realizes, “‘No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.’”(Bradbury, pg. 75) Mrs. Bentley serves to teach the reader that it is futile to cling onto the person that one once was and that one must embrace personal change despite its daunting