Journal Responses to Ray Bradbury's The Martian
Chronicles
by Alex Wilder
20th Century Literature
Independent Novel Project
It should first be noted that each section of this novel is a short story
within itself; therefore, I will be responding to them as such.
I. January 1999 - Rocket Summer
The first chapter of Ray
Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is titled "Rocket Summer."
This seems like an odd title, due to the fact that it's set in the dead of
winter. However, that is explained in the last paragraph, when the narration
states: "The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with
every breath of its mighty exhausts." The bursts of heat coming from the
base of the rocket are what caused the cold winter day to transform into one of
hot, stifling summer.
This chapter pulled me right into
the book; there are so many blasts of spectacular imagery that I find it
impossible not to see a small film play in my head as I read. One particular
quote from the second paragraph completely blows me away: "The heat pulsed
among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to
melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their
wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and
showed last summer's ancient green lawns." Even Bradbury's writing style
here suggests that everything is happening very quickly. This happened. Then
this happened. Everything punctuated. So. Concisely. As if this chapter would suddenly form its own slideshow, and each second passing would cause the fabrics
of time to elicit a small click when the slides changed.
"Rocket
Summer" details the suspense felt by the citizens of an
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II. February 1999 - Ylla
I had mixed responses to this
chapter. That wasn't because of the writing -- no, the writing itself was
brilliant as I expected -- however, I found myself disliking a character before
I even got to know him. That character is Yll. The
chapter, called simply "Ylla," is about a
Martian couple going about their daily routines. Nothing seems out of the
ordinary, until Ylla -- the wife -- describes a dream
she had about a tall man with light skin, blue eyes, and black hair. (This is
an anomaly in Martian culture, as they all have brown skin and yellow eyes.)
The husband, Yll, begins to get angry when she starts
describing this man, calling the dream (and the elements within the dream)
"nonsense," "wishful thinking," and "stupid." The
situation worsens when Ylla becomes the first of the
Martians to begin singing a strange song, a song not written in their language.
Yll, thinking his wife ill, tries different ways of
confining her to the house and distracting her. He takes her into the
This blatant casting-off of one
who thinks differently reminded me somewhat of Fahrenheit 451, as that
was one of the recurring themes in that book as well. The 1984-esque shunning
of those who possess the slightest bit of independed
thought or imagination immediately put me off the character of Yll. At this point, taking into consideration the usual
villains-be-villains-till-the-end plot style of Bradbury, I had a very dim hope
that he would redeem himself in the end.
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III. August 1999 - The Summer
Night
To be completely honest, I thought
this chapter had jumped straight out of the Twilight Zone. All of these
Martians have the ability to pick up on telepathic signals, and as the men from
Earth near the planet in their rocketship, any words,
thoughts, or songs that they think of are immediately transmitted into the
minds of the Martian people. The entire chapter had an eerie,
we-are-taking-over-your-brain feel, and I actually caught myself glancing
sporadically toward my window. Entire bands play songs they've never heard
before in their lives. The singer, coerced by her own telepathic ability into
singing an unfamiliar song, is forced into tears as she flees from the stage.
It even affects the children: "In the black alleys, under the torches, the
children sang: '-- and when she got there, the cupboard was bare, and so her
poor dog had none!'"
It is in this chapter that I first
noticed the huge connection between Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles
and the Cold War -- the time period during which the collection of short
scenarios was written. The paranoia that sets in highly resembles that of the
1950s McCarthy-era spawned Red Scare ("red" being another symbolic
attachment to Mars itself, being the "red planet"), wherein everyone
was afraid of being forced into a Communist state and the threat of nuclear
weapons was one feared by all. ("'Something terrible will happen in the
morning.' 'Nothing can happen, all is well with us.' A
hysterical sobbing. 'It is coming nearer and nearer and nearer!'")
Needless to say, I quickly
attached myself to the hidden sentiment behind the stories to better understand
them. Bradbury's inspiration was not the opium-dream of a science-fiction
writer.
Bradbury's inspiration was very
real.
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IV. August 1999 - The Earth Men
This section ties in with
"The Summer Night," contributing a little resolution to the panic and heightened suspense of the previous chapter.
The Earth men (those sent on a rocket expedition from Earth [connection to
first section "Rocket Summer"]) finally land on Mars, and they waste
no time in attempting to glean a warm, heroic welcome from the natives of the
planet. "We are from Earth!" the captain of the rocketship announces to the first "Martian" he
meets. The Martian, a woman, greets them not warmly, but with incredible
disdain. They invite themselves in, to the woman's ultimate dismay ("All
over my clean floor!" she cried. "Mud! Get
out! If you come in my house, wash your boots first.") -- and when they do, it spawns a completely new theme within
the story: ethnocentrism. The Earth men begin basing Martian culture on their
own from the very start, when the captain exclaims, "You are a Martian!"
rather than use the proper name for the planet given by the inhabitants, which
is Tyrr.
The charade continues throughout
several different households, as the men from Earth try to get recognition for
their accomplishments from the natives. Finally, they're tricked into locking
themselves into an insane asylum along with everyone else who's made the claim
of being from Earth. This is a strong symbol of the respect Americans demand
when they infringe upon other cultures, declaring that democracy and other
American ideals are the best solutions for the problems of other worlds --
however, they don't understand that the substance of their culture, when
introduced to a completely different society, may cause said society to
crumble.
And then they appear shocked when
the inhabitants of the foreign land try to kill them to remove their influence.
(Related scene: Martian psychologist accuses the captain of imposing a
complicated hallucination on him when the captain shows him the rocketship. The psychologist then determines that in order
to get rid of the hallucination [rocketship], he must
get rid of the Earth men. When this doesn't work and the rocketship
still remains, the psychologist kills himself, symbolizing the fall of another
culture due to foreign influence.)
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V. March 2000 - The Taxpayer
I found "The Taxpayer"
to be an interesting chapter considering certain sentiments held by the working
class in today's
It could be true that Captain
Black and the rest of the crew ultimately have good intentions. They realize
that if they allow large masses of Earth citizens to embark on similar voyages,
Martian cultures would be destroyed. However, what they may not realize
is that by making the expeditions in the first place, they're doing a good
enough job of destroying the culture on their own.
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VI. April 2000 - The Third
Expedition
In April of the year 2000, Captain
Black and his crew finally set off on the third expedition to Mars, mainly for
the purpose of finding out what happened to the other two expeditions before
them. And this is where Ray Bradbury finally throws me a loop with rampant
surrealism and hallucinations worthy of a 1970's acid novel. When they arrive
on Mars, Captain Black and the others are greeted by a communicative telepathic
hallucination so complex and so intense, that it makes them believe it's a sort
of heaven. Mars is heaven. Mars is heaven. They confront dead relatives
("In the doorway, Mom, pink, plump, and bright. Behind
her, pepper-gray, Dad, his pipe in his hand. 'Mom, Dad!' He ran up the
steps like a child to meet them.") and believe
they are actually making peaceful interaction with their loved ones long since
deceased. But it all turns out to be a trap, and when the captain finally
realizes that he's been lured into a highly misplaced feeling of comfort and
familiarity, he tries to escape.
He never makes it out. Neither do
the others.
"The mayor made a sad little
speech, his face sometimes looking like the mayor, sometimes looking like
something else. Mother and Father Black were there, with Brother Edward, and
they cried, their faces melting now from a familiar face into something
else."
The connection immediately coming
into my mind after reading this chapter was that of the fear of Communist
ideals seeping into America and being welcomed with open arms -- Americans
lulled into a false sense of security as the "Reds" plot to kill them
in their sleep. This was a common fear -- nukes, invasions, satellites; all of
these loomed in the distance and one by one, Americans began to suspect their
loved ones of Communism, and they no longer resembled loved ones, but rather
individual faces of the enemy, all intent on destroying the things they hold
dear.
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VII. June 2001 - -- And The Moon Be Still As Bright
In this chapter, the crew of the fourth expedition appear as if they're going to arrive in one piece. And so they do. However, they arrive on Mars only to discover that the population of the planet has been wiped out from chicken pox, a disease probably brought in unknowingly by one of the previous expeditions. The majority of the crew doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that this civilization has been utterly wiped out due to something the Earth men brought upon them. They celebrate, and drink, and dance in response to their “successful mission.” The captain lets him. But Spender, the archaeologist, is disgusted, and he leaves the group, only to return quite some time later to kill them all.
The behaviour of this group and the events sequence that took place after their landing was somewhat reminiscent of another infringement on a culture which occurred when English settlers brought many of their diseases (many of which were considered childhood diseases and were of little to no concern to the settlers whose immune systems were used to this sort of bacterial/viral assault) upon the Native Americans who lived in those respective areas. This clearly illustrates the impact the smallest things can have on a culture when it is disturbed or influenced by an outside party.
Regarding Spender’s behavior – I cheered him on. I was rather upset when he died himself, but the fact that the captain started adhering to Spender’s beliefs and respect for the Martian civilization proved to be compensation for that.
Though I enjoyed this chapter fully, it does divert attention from the implied references from the paranoia of the Cold War and effects thereof, and having a chapter about early English settlers amidst a plethora of subtle anti-McCarthyism doesn’t seem to make too much sense. Then again, I could be reading too much into it. It was still enjoyable.
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VIII. August 2001 – The Settlers
After several chapters of
expeditions and then the previous chapter dealing with the discovery of the
Martian civilization’s demise, this chapter was, for me, one of those “I knew
it!” reads. The Martians died off, the planet itself was habitable. What else
was left for the Earth men to do, besides colonization? Why would they want to
make expeditions in the first place unless the expanses of democracy and the
Several of Earth’s inhabitants – a
very small number – prepare to inhabit Mars. Bradbury writes about a few
reasons why these people are leaving Earth, which basically encompasses every
reason possible. “They came because they were afraid or unafraid, because they
were happy or unhappy, because they felt like Pilgrims or did not feel like
Pilgrims. There was a reason for each man. They were leaving bad wives or bad
jobs or bad towns; they were coming to find something or leave something or get
something, to dig up something or bury something or leave something alone. They
were coming with small dreams or large dreams or none at all. But a government
finger pointed from the four-color posters in many towns: THERE’S WORK FOR YOU
IN THE SKY: SEE MARS!” This particular quote illustrates the ambiguity and
variety amongst the new generation of pioneers to this not-so-distant planet,
quite like the very sentiment that went around when
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VIV. December
2001 – The Green Morning
Among the first settlers to embark on a journey to Mars was a man named Benjamin Driscoll. Upon first stepping off the rocket and onto Martian soil, Driscoll promptly fainted and faced returning to Earth because he couldn’t handle the thin air of the Martian atmosphere very well. However, he did not want to go back. Thus, he devised a plan that would make the Martian atmosphere more habitable for not only himself but for generations of visitors to Mars: plant trees. Turn the dry landscape of Mars into something green; turn the sandy valley into a river delta.
After he speaks with the co-ordinator of the Earth immigration to Mars, Driscoll is assigned this task of planting trees much to his delight. And so he embarks on this journey across the planet with a motorcycle and a bin full of various tree seeds to start planting. A month passes. At first he has doubts about whether anything is able to grow there (“Perhaps his entire campaign, his four weeks of bending and scooping were lost”), but then the rains come and the trees sprout almost instantaneously. This is one of the few concepts in the book over which I experience mixed emotions. On one hand, the scientific impossibility of fully grown trees sprouting up after hardly a month’s time is sufficiently enough to annoy, as there is no given reason why Nature’s laws can be bent in this particular situation. However, the flow of the novel would be terribly disrupted if one were to skip ahead twenty years and relate the story of the trees then. So, while it doesn’t make sense in a scientific way, it is a rather common literary tool (especially in science fiction) to twist the laws of nature and physics in order to achieve plot continuity.
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X. February 2002 – The Locusts
Unlike the title suggests – this chapter is not about insect plagues of biblical proportions. It is, however, a metaphor for the plague of rocket ships that shuttled back and forth between Mars and Earth once the planet itself had been established as “Property of Earth.”
This has to be one of the shortest
chapters in the book, weighing in at an astounding half-page. But the imagery
within it is so alive that it doesn’t matter how long it is. “The rockets came
like locusts,” Bradbury writes, “swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.
And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange
world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the
strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-tooth
carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame
cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and
fit green shades to pull against the night.” This chapter is about
construction, about building something new, about being able to make life on
Mars more comfortable. But the tone was so sad. The tone I read this chapter in
made me feel a strong sense of foreboding. I couldn’t help but think that they
were going about it all wrong. It’s cyclic, I realized. The chapters referring
to the paranoia about Communist infiltration were not put there for the purpose
of representing the entire theme. They were only a part of the whole story.
That was Ray Bradbury’s attempt to take us to the Department of Back Story. And
now with all these similarities between the occupation of Mars and the mass
wave of immigrants and construction to the
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XI. August 2002 – Night Meeting
On his way to the Blue Hills, new Earth-to-Mars settler Tomas Gomez stops for gasoline and has a short conversation with the proprietor of the petrol station. The old business owner remarks and gushes over how different Mars is as compared to Earth. I couldn’t help but laugh; it was such a ridiculous statement (and very much in Bradbury’s subtle cynicism toward some misperceptions arising from human idealism) as the chapter before it previously indicated that the settlers were doing their best to make Mars look and feel exactly like Earth.
But they have the conversation nonetheless, and Tomas continues en route to the Blue Hills. That’s when a very surreal thing happens: Tomas meets a Martian. Both Martian and Tomas are very peaceable with each other, but when they attempt to shake hands, they cannot. The hand of Tomas passes through the hand of the Martian with little more feeling than simply touching air. “Their hands met and – like mist – fell through each other.” It is decided that they are simply from different planes of time (i.e. one from the past, one from the future), and then they part separate ways, both reverting to denouncing the experience as a trick played on them by their own minds when in fact the chapter was one enormous trope about the echoes of the past still remaining regardless of the sparkling newness of the pavement that covers the footprints of the old ground.
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XII. October 2002 – The Shore
“The
Shore” mentioned in this short chapter was not suggestive of any beaches or
oceans on the surface of Mars. The shore is yet another enormous metaphor given
for the final stop of the journey of several Earth men as they trickle toward
the would-be desolate fourth planet in search of new lives. “Each wave [was]
different, and each wave stronger. The first wave carried with it men
accustomed to spaces and coldness and being alone, the coyote and the cattlemen
[…] the second men were Americans also. And they came from the cabbage
tenements and subways, and they found much rest and vacation in the company of
silent men from the tumbleweed states who knew how to use silences so they
filled you up with peace after long years crushed in tubes, tins, and boxes in
Further on in the chapter it is pointed out that the only settlers yet to embark on this journey are American. This is met with the knowledge that when one particular type of settler who came from the Old World to the New World in the middle of the last millennium, thriving on escape from religious persecution – they were also very set in their ways and those that had attempted to escape England from religious persecution were of one mind about persecuting newcomers who had like ideas about escaping religious persecution. The cycle begins as such and it proves apparent in the chapter titled “The Shore” that the same sorts of trials are due to happen again.
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XIII. February 2003 – Interim
This chapter is one of the only chapters which has a title that matches exactly what is happening in the story. It is an interim. Bradbury describes new-Martians (those who had recently immigrated from Earth) doing practices that they would have done at home. Poets wrote, writers wrote, beachcombers combed the beach, and the churchgoers still went to the churches with the stained glass windows and sang numbered hymns. Life goes on almost exactly as it had on Earth, and yet everyone thinks it is so different, so different.
It is so similar to the way life used to be that the final paragraph of the chapter describes the environment as something out of an old, yet classic movie: “It was as if, in many ways, a great earthquake had shaken loose the roots and cellars of an Iowa town, and then, in an instant, a whirlwind twister of Oz-like proportions had carried the entire town off to Mars to set it down without a bump. . . .”
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XIV. April 2003 – The Musicians
Out of all the chapters, this one, “The Musicians,” had all the makings of a disturbing horror flick where the others had lacked. The imagery was eerie, and it created a scene that was devoid of innocence where those who happened to be living in the world described may not have believed so. Some children leave the grocery store and go to old ruins of Martian civilization, where the decaying skeletons and ruins of the old culture lay at rest, waiting to be burned.
And
these boys; they simply saunter inside the ruins, where one of them would run
into the old house where “he would kick about, thrash his feet, and the black
leaves would fly through the air, brittle, thin as tissue cut from
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XV. June 2003 – Way In The Middle Of The Air
“’ I can’t figure out why they left now. With things lookin’ up. I mean, every day they got more rights. What they want, anyway? Here’s the poll tax gone, and more and more states passin’ anti-lynchin’ bills, and all kinds of equal rights. What more they want? They make almost as good money as a white man, but there they go.’”
The main character in this chapter is a white supremist named Samuel Teece. Right off the bat, there were several times I wanted to reach into the book and throttle him. He gets absolutely livid about the news that the coloured people of the town in which they live are getting rockets and leaving to Mars to get away from the likes of people exactly like Samuel Teece, who had complained about the underlying event of this chapter, which is the Civil Rights Movement that took place after World War II. Teece rants about the “niggers” as one by one, every African-American he has in his employ leaves to go to Mars. He tries to intimidate them, scare them, even hold them back with old debts and false contracts, but still, they leave. And Teece doesn’t admit he’s lost, not even after they’ve left. Instead, he says “Did you notice? Right up to the very last, by God, he said ‘Mister’!” pretending he was still superior after all.
Yes. This was a chapter that irritated me – not because of the writing, but because of the harsh but true representation of the mindset of that time period.
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XVI. April 2005 – Usher II
In 1838, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and it was burned, according to Bradbury canon, in the Great Fire of the 1960s-1970s. (Let it be known that the reference to Fahrenheit 451 in The Martian Chronicles excited me far more than sanity should allow.) A man by the name of William Stehndahl, after inheriting some fortune and moving to Mars, proceeds to rebel against the “morally pure” standards in effect since Fahrenheit 451 by building an exact replica of the House of Usher on Martian soil. Despite numerous inspections by the associates of Moral Climates, he keeps the house for some time, until he finally invites those he’d befriended from the Society for the Prevention of Fantasy over to the House of Usher II for a party. It was a masquerade of sorts, to “celebrate” its existence before it is finally torn down and burned by those who, like those at Moral Climates, call Stehndahl a rather nasty person.
This
– the house, the party, everything – is all part of a plan; it’s a plan to
contain all of the fantasy-and-horror-free people in the House of Usher. After
he chains the Moral Climates inspector, Garrett, in a room against a wall, he
hastens to the exit where a helicopter waits, and then, on cue, the Red Death
appears at
I think that’s one of the first times I’ve actually set a book down to break into spontaneous applause.
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XVII. August 2005 – The Old Ones
This is, by far, the shortest chapter in the book. Incidentally, it’s the most hilarious. It can be summarized in a single sentence. “The old people finally come to Mars.”
Really.
There is no hidden meaning in this chapter, nor is there deep ingrained philosophy or metaphor. This chapter is simply what it is – and a whole two paragraphs after the length of the previous story’s ten pages. The old people finally come to Mars. And I’ll leave it at that.
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XVIII. September 2005 – The Martian
In September of the year 2005, something very interesting happens to the occupants of the new Martian-turned-Earth territory. A Martian shows up, able to take the shape and personality of those dearly grieved by the people from Earth. Just like at the beginning of the book, when the team of the second expedition had thought the Martians to be their loved ones in heaven when in reality the Martians were using their telepathy to project psychological manifestations of these dead loved ones onto themselves, this last remaining Martian was using this power in order to stay safe from the inhabitants of the city.
My reaction was immediate and expected. It was a sad chapter. The Martian had to look like everyone else in order to be safe. And then, when everyone crowded in on it, it was forced to take on so many aspects of so many “dead loved ones” that it died itself, sporting many parts of many faces at once, then left there by those who’d forced the change in the first place.
It was a stunning symbol of the “be-like-us-and-you-won’t-get-hurt” attitude carried around on the shoulders of people who are prominent in Bradbury’s satirical analysis of the human condition through works of fiction.
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XVIV. November 2005 – The Luggage Store
In “The Luggage Store,” the man who works there has found out about a nuclear war that has erupted on Earth. What astonished me most about this chapter was the implication that Bradbury suggests people would want to return to Earth once they’d found out about a nuclear war. I always figured people would be too terrified of being blown up or radiated to go back, but apparently there are some rather foolhardy individuals who would willingly fling themselves back into the fray after escaping. I suppose the fact that friends and family members might still be on Earth would be a reason to go back, albeit not a very good one, as adding another death to the toll by getting yourself blown up as well would be a bit counterproductive to the effort.
“’It’s a funny thing, Father, but yes, I think we’ll all go back. I know, we came up here to get away from the atom bomb, war, pressure groups, prejudice, laws – I know. But it’s still home there.’”
That may be so. But I would think that one would be able to safely acknowledge “home” by keeping up-to-date on the news back “home” whilst kept a few million miles away from “home,” preferably in one piece.
XX. November 2005 – The Off Season
Wrought with symbolism of the treatment received by the Native Americans after they were pushed back into reservations because they wouldn’t give up their land, “The Off Season” tells of a man who runs a business – the first hot dog stand on Mars, erected amongst the ruin and furthering the opinion that the majority of humanity would not think twice about such an act of desecration, even if it’s as tacky as Sam Parkhill’s idiotic hot dog stand. One of the remaining hundred Martians attempts to go to the hot dog stand with a message about Earth, but he isn’t very well-received (litotes, understatement in the extreme – the Martian is killed when the brass message tube he carries is suspected of being a weapon). Afterward, the man kills another Martian, and his wife, Elma, is starting to believe that he’ll kill her too.
However, he doesn’t – and for some inexplicable reason, Sam Parkhill is made the heir of Mars by the last remaining Martians (I’m assuming here that Ray Bradbury has very little faith in the bits of good left in humanity – his reasoning, I’m afraid, is quite supported by current events and those events previously occurring). While Earth is tormented by nuclear bombs, Elma simply turns to Sam and says, “This looks like it’s going to be an off season.”
Again, a masterful employment of understatement.
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XXI. November 2005 – The Watchers
The
situation between Earth and Mars is now steadily beginning to look like the
relationship between
People are forced to think about those who live on Earth, and the next day, the luggage store sells every last suitcase in its stock.
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XXII. December 2005 – The Silent Towns
When everyone else has left back to Earth (to their own destruction, might I add – a point in Bradbury’s work that I fail to see reason for to this day), there is one woman and one man left on Mars. The man, Walter Gripp, is a rigid, infantile man who has had endless troubles finding a wife. “He had a placer mine and a remote shack far up in the blue Martian hills and he walked to town every two weeks to see if he could marry a quiet and intelligent woman. Over the years he had always returned to his shack, alone and disappointed.” When he arrives in the city, he’s stunned to find it completely abandoned. He lives the high life for a while and stocks up on the town’s supplies, which is enough to tide him over for several years. But he longs ever so much for human company. So, he gets an idea to flip through the phone book and call a salon, where he’s “certain” to find a woman at last.
The woman, Genevieve, is everything Walter dreamed of. In a nightmare. She’s loud, boisterous, obese, and tactless, and finally, Walter runs away from her even though it’s quite possible that she was the very last woman on Mars. And if the last woman in the world and the last man in the world have no chance of ever getting along or procreating, that certainly means that humanity really doesn’t have a chance of continuing.
It makes me think, “What would Adam and Eve do if they loathed each other?”
They certainly wouldn’t be able to send a rocket to Mars.
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XXIII. October 2026 – The Million-Year Picnic
This is the very last chapter of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. A man and a woman and their three sons come to Mars, away from Earth, away from the wars. They say that they’re going on a fishing trip. In reality, they’re immigrating to Mars, just as people had done in years past. Just before everything on Earth was destroyed.
Rather than peppering this chapter with cynicism and bitterness, Bradbury ends the novel on a bit of hope. Yes, the boys are sad that there is no more radio signal; they’re sad because there’s no more Earth. (Or rather, no more Earth the way they knew it.) However, the father consoles them by telling them that they can have any of the dead cities on Mars that they want. Immediately, the boys are overjoyed. (I think, if I were that small, I might be placated if someone were to suddenly offer me my own city.)
The reason this gives hope is not in the fact that the father has suddenly given his sons cities that do not belong to them. The hope lies within the sudden realization that – yes, they do. And when they leave their rocket behind, they blow a bit of it up so they’ll never be able to take it back to Earth. They make a silent vow that their immigration to Mars will not be like the commercialized, tacky movement of the earlier years. And when the three boys ask fervently if they can see a real Martian, the following sequence occurs:
“They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.
‘I’ve always wanted to see a real Martian,’ said Michael. ‘Where are they, Dad? You promised.’
‘There they are,’ said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.”
They were looking at their own reflections in the water.
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