Characterisation?

In the story All Summers in a day, The Venus children ostracised Margot, a child from Earth who had seen the sun for 4 years. The Venus children knew that Margot was different as she longed for the sun, and kept a distance from her.

I guess that in the same way, if aliens who looked like us were to come to Earth one day, and tell us of things more beautiful than the sun, the sky and the sea, we would ostracise them too. After all, we are humans, and even though the aliens look the same, we would still marginalise them, just like we do to people of different skin colour.

Back to topic. The children on Venus dislike and discriminate against Margot as she was different. More specifically, because she had seen the sun and they had not (or rather, they forgot what the sun was like) they were jealous of her. With this jealousy came open discrimination, and they showed acts of cruelty, for example pushing her into the closet against her will, and making her miss her opportunity to see the sun.

Also, Margot was partially at fault. She was arrogant and introverted. She did not socialise with the children well, and the children's efforts to make her a class member failed.

In my opinion, I feel that the children did not mean to be cruel to Margot. It only takes a few people to set an example, and the rest will follow due to peer pressure. I'm sure that some of those children would want to make friends with Margot, but peer pressure killed that desire and replaced it with loathing. Coupled with the fact that Margot was not much of a socialite, one can understand why Margot was discriminated against.