It seems interesting for me to dwell on the first and second plans, because they fully characterize and reveal the main hero of the book.
First plan, as it was already mentioned, contains dialogs, diary notes and dreams. Second contains inside dialogs, outward appearance of the hero (by other characters’ eyes).
Douglas’ dreams have an important function in the book. They fix metaphoricalness of his thinking and strengthen everything he saw in fantastic images. Dreams during the illness are distinguished with absurdity but at the same time they are bright, symbolic.
It is metaphorical and metaphysical comprehension of everything he saw:
“The ladies in a Green Machine sailed by in a sound of black seal barking, lifting hands as white as doves. They sank into the lawn’s deep waters, their gloves still waving to him as the grass closed over…”
“And quickly then from a window across the way Colonel Freeleigh leaned out with the face of a clock, and buffalo dust sprang up in the street. Colonel Freeleigh spanged and rattled, his jaw fell open, a mainspring shot out and dangled on the air instead of his tongue. He collapsed like a puppet on the still, one arm still waving…”
His dreams are like symbols.
Inside monologues of Douglas, depending on the reason, are distinguished with patheticalness (lofty language, speech figures, turns, composite sentences, reach descriptions) or with expressivity (intermittence, short sentences, the condition of warning, shock):
“It almost happened, thought Douglas. Whatever it was it was Big, my gosh, it was Big! Something scared it off. Where is it now? Back on that bush! No, behind me! No, here… almost here…”
“I was there, last night, in the ravine. I saw Elizabeth Ramsell. I came by here last night on the way home. I saw the lemonade glass there on the rail. Just last night it was. I could drink that, I thought… I could drink that…”
Here’s an example of pathetic monologue:
“Who could say where town or wildness began? Who could say which owned what and what owned which? There was always and for ever that indefinable place where the two struggled and one of them won for a season to possess a certain avenue, a dell, a glen, a tree, a bush. Then thin lapping of the great continental sea of grass and flower, starting far out in lonely farm country, mowed inwards with the thrust of seasons. Each night the wilderness, the meadows, the far country flowed down-creek through ravine and welled up in town with a smell of grass and water, and the town was disinhabitated and dead and gone back to earth. And each morning a little more of the ravine edged up into town, threatening to swamp garages like leaking rowboats, devour ancient cars which had been left to the flaking mercies of the rain and therefore rust”
In the other passage from the beginning of the book, when Douglas feels himself alive and tries to describe it, he (and the author, of course) uses lots of similes: “shelled ears”, “The world … like images sparked in a crystal sphere”, “his breath … going in ice, coming in fire” and so on.
Impressed by the world around him Douglas’ speech is reach and full of euphemisms:
“Douglas moved slowly down the path. The ravine was indeed a place where you came to look at two things of life, the ways of man and the ways of the natural world. The town was, after all, only a large ship filed with constantly moving survivors, bailing out of the grass, chipping away the rust. Now and again the lifeboat, a shanty, kin to the mother ship, lost out to the quiet storm of seasons, sank down in silent waves of termite and ant into swallowing ravine to feel the flicker of grasshoppers rattling like dry paper in hot weeds…”
Some dialogues between children Bradbury presents with short dynamic sentences with using a lot of slang: “So Mr. Black wouldn’t know, dumb! … Okay, don’t look mad. It was “sucker” or whatever.”, “… Boy, he’s got a scalded look.” and so on.
Among the rhetorical figures special emphasis is put on metaphors, similes, personifications, oxymoron, parallelisms, hyperboles, euphemisms. With this reach language author puts us closer to his characters, allows us to understand all the palette of their feelings and emotions. Bradbury’s language is special, attracting and unique. His characters are real; everyone can find one’s habits and traits in them. Summing all these facts I can say that this book made a great impression on me. It’s one of the best books about childhood which helps adults to forget at a short date about their problems and become these careless little kids they used to be some time ago.
Bradbury, R. Dandelion Wine, М.: Айрис-пресс, 2008. p. 250