Dandelion Wine and “Sonnet 73” Comparison
In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73”, the speaker tells of death, love, and aging through a series of metaphors that also reveal important paradoxes. The speaker does not want to be forgotten and unloved at the time of his death and almost pleads to be loved and remembered. Similarly to not wanting to be forgotten and losing memories in “Sonnet 73”, Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine characters are faced with death, aging, and love through the course of a 1928 summer filled with young and old alike making memories, not forgetting old memories, and not forgetting the elderly. The central theme connecting these two works involves taking chances before time runs out and death catches up. This theme is revealed through the process of aging, youth, and death.
Both Bradbury and Shakespeare link the central theme of using time before it’s gone through the process of aging in both works. For example, Bradbury sets the scene of the protagonist’s Great-Grandma lying on her deathbed and describes her life as she has aged: “Looking back on thirty billions of things started, finished, and done…” Bradbury reveals how she had aged and all she has done while aging. Similarly to showing the process of aging through Great-Grandma, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of “the glowing of such fire, that on the ashes of his youth doth lie…” (lines 9-10) to reveal the speaker’s once fiery and youthful spirit that, through the process of aging, has slowly been broken down like Great-Grandma. Through this metaphor, Shakespeare is depicting the speaker’s life, like Great-Grandma’s, through the process of aging. Also, Bradbury describes this process of aging through a lonely widow named Mrs. Bentley who was deceived by three children into thinking she has and always will be her old age. Mrs. Bentley come to an epiphany: “These things don’t belong to you here, you now. They belong to he so long ago” (75). Through this insight, Bradbury portrays how deceived Mrs. Bentley has become as a result of the process of aging. Likewise in Shakespeare’s Sonnet, the speaker is also emotionally affected by the process of aging almost seeming insecure about his aging, “In me thou seest the twilight of such day, as after sunset fadeth in the west…” (lines 5-6). By the sunset fading and the twilight of the day, Shakespeare is achieving the speaker’s emotional insecurity about the process of aging because he does not want to die alone. Both works, through insights and metaphors, share the theme of aging and the fear and understanding of the process of aging.
Along with the process of aging, fear of youth fading and no longer having a sense of youth is tied into the central theme both Shakespeare and Bradbury connect to. For example in Shakespeare’s Sonnet, the speaker is remembering and somewhat grieving his lost youth, “… the glowing of such fire, that on the ashes of his youth doth lie…” (lines 9-10). Through this metaphor, Shakespeare describes the speaker as a once youthful person and how the youth has slowly been burned out of him. In comparison, Bradbury again uses the elderly widow Mrs. Bentley as she is pondering what the three children have almost convinced her of: “She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back” (75). Similarly to Shakespeare’s metaphor of once being young, Mrs. Bentley also begins to understand that although she may have been a young child once, that time is gone and she needs to let go of that to enjoy the rest of her life, much like in Shakespeare’s sonnet. Thus, both authors portray youth as a fleeting moment in time that needs to be remembered, but once youth passes it is gone for good.
In conjunction with aging and youth fading, both Bradbury and Shakespeare share an aspect of tge central theme of fear of dying and being forgotten coupled with the inevitability of death. Such as in Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine when the protagonist Doug’s Great-Grandma is walking to her room pondering her last thoughts, Bradbury eases into the thought of her death, “Now, chalk in hand, she stood back from life a silent hour before reaching for the eraser” (181) to soften the blow for both her family and the reader. By easing into Great-Grandma’s death, Bradbury portrays the mortality of people and how the calm before the storm of death is in the mind of the dying as they begin to reflect on their life. Likewise, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” speaker also depicts death and pondering back to youth as he dies, “That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire, consumed with that which it was nourished by” (lines 10-12). Similar to Bradbury using death to reveal thoughts of youth, Shakespeare uses youth to show how the speaker dies, in a youthful spirit although his physical body has grown old. Both authors couple death with youth to better elaborate the death of a character or speaker and make their death more elegant.
Therefore, both Dandelion Wine and “Sonnet 73” share a theme of using time on earth wisely before it runs out and appreciating youth. Through this theme, Bradbury portrays the innocence of youth through the protagonist Doug and how his naivete is stripped away when his Great-Grandma dies. Along with youth, Bradbury shows the process of aging through the elderly coupled with making memories. In comparison, Shakespeare also uses death, youth, and aging to achieve the theme by using metaphors revealing paradoxes. By sharing the theme of taking chances before time runs out and the inevitability of death catches up, both works describe death, a glimpse of youth, and fear or aging in order to show the reader that mortality cannot be escaped.
