Dandelion Wine features many themes throughout the book. One of these was the theme of life. Not life as in living but what it means to live. In Dandelion Wine Douglas comes to terms with life.
             First Douglas becomes conscious of the fact he is alive when berry-picking with his father and brother, Tom. He never really thought of this before, and his discovery gives him a feeling of pure joy and excitement and he celebrates all the life that is around him. But however, the rest of the book is about Douglas coming to term with what follows life-death and understanding he must die someday.
             Life is in a way inseparable from death. We see them as two opposite ends of existence, and the line between them is very clear. Life only has meaning as long as there is death. But to Douglas who is only twelve years old and only has just found out he is alive, coming to grips with death is not easy. Death takes away the "magic" that he has just found and so he does not accept that it will come for him someday. On the contrary, Ray Bradbury shows us that death is not always a bad thing. For example, both Helen Loomis and Great-Grandma Spaulding die content and comfortable. They are able to die happy because they lived their lives the way they wanted to with no regrets.
             In contrast, Colonel Freeleigh, or the time machine as the boys called him, willing speeds up his death in return for the feeling of his blood rushing through his veins and his heart beat like it did when he was young. What is important is that we continually drink in the magic of life.
             Like Grandpa Spaulding, we must see the beauty in simple things such as mowing the lawn or the flavorful scents of the garden and its weeds. Douglas gets sick and almost "dies" before Tom gets Mr. Jonas to come and give him a gift he forgot he had...life. The fight with mortality became so terrible for Douglas because he refused to let it go and even came up with far-reaching ...