Summer Rituals

Summer Rituals


Journal Essay #1
Summer Rituals
For Ray Bradbury everyday routines had became his summer rituals. Rituals are events that occur in a prescribed order. For most families rituals are something to be cherished and something they do every year like a camping trip, or a vacation. They create life long memories and can bring even the oldest adult back to their childhood. In this semi autobiography by Ray Bradbury, he talks about his summer rituals and what summer means to him. The tone is very calm and you don’t really feel emotion reading it. This essay is in third person because he wrote it as an adult looking back on his childhood, and does not use the word I in it. Bradbury uses the character “Douglas” as an alias and he describes his summer of sitting on the porch with the family.
The author also uses very descriptive terms and makes me feel like I am actually at home with my family. “It wasn’t important what the adults talked about; it was only important that the sounds came and went over the delicate ferns that bordered the porch on three sides; it was only important that the darkness filled the town like black water being poured over the houses and that the cigars glowed and that the conversations went on and on”. This is one of my favorite quotes from the reading because it reminds me of my summer ritual of camping at Allegany State Park and how the adults talked all night long on the cabin porch, and how the fire glowed beyond the darkness.

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