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But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away.

This quote introduces an instance in which Margot’s behavior has contributed to her alienation from the children of Venus. Her aversion to the planet’s violent rains becomes so intense that she cannot bring herself to stand under the water of the school’s showers, and she has a clamorous breakdown in front of her peers. The other children can’t understand why the torrent of water from the shower head repulses her; the rains of Venus are all they have ever known, and therefore the constant fusillade of water is part of normal life. But because Margot remembers life on Earth, at times she is unable to function on Venus, and her panicked reaction to the shower sets her apart as outlandish and strange. That her impression of her difference from the others is dull here suggests that her psyche has been blunted by her surroundings; to the others, Margot’s differences are stark and, in this case, hostile.

[T]he biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was…And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was.

This quote addresses the core reason for Margot’s estrangement from the other children of the colony. All the children of Venus suffer from feelings of profound alienation—from their home planet, from their species, and from the source of all life: the sun. But Margot’s late arrival on Venus, which has allowed her to retain real memories of the sun, has set her apart as “other.” Ironically, and tragically, the other children’s afflictions of alienation lead them to feel jealous of Margot, and in turn they feel compelled to both torture and ostracize her. The result is Margot’s further alienation, not only from the rest of humanity on Earth, but now even from her peers on Venus.

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