Critique Of The Martian Chronicles - 1238 Words

Lasiter 1 10/28/17 Meyer Period 3 The Martian Chronicles Critique Ray Bradbury was an American author born on August 22, 1920 who died on June 5, 2012 at the age of 91. Bradbury was a prolific and beloved writer who wrote many novels considered today to be staples of the science fiction genre such as Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Martian Chronicles (www.biography.com). The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories Bradbury wrote over several years detailing the colonization of mars by humans. Present in this collection of stories are a number of themes portraying the weaknesses of mankind. In these stories are tales of corporate greed, mental illness, religious zealotry, gullible ignorance,†¦show more content†¦It would be one thing if all of humanity were totally oblivious to the moral infractions they imposed but that is not the case. All throughout the book we see desenters of the hyper capitalistic regime be silenced. Early on in the book Spender gets gunned down as a result of his trying to pr otect the planet from future human â€Å"invasions† and the eventual commercialization of mars (pg.45). In Usher II we see Mr.Garett brutally murdered by Stendahl’s automata for morally opposing his amusement attraction (pg.167). This is what makes Bradbury’s message so powerful. Not only are humans poisoning something once beautiful but those who oppose it are disposed of in brutal, cold, Soviet fashion. Another way Bradbury highlights the flaws of humanity is through the way he contrasts the Martians with Humans. In the beginning of the book he shows Mars as a gleaming, pristine society. Martian society has flawed elements like Earth. They have mentally ill, violent crime, and social outcasts like humans. But as a whole they are respectful to their environment prosperous and an idealyc utopian society. He then contrast the sharply a couple stories later with the beginning of the evils of humanity. On captain Wilder’s mission the crew land on Mars and Lasiter 3 immediately begin drinking and littering. Biggs even goes so far as to intentionally toss his empty bottles into a martian canal as a pathetic show of dominance over the planet. By the end of the book both societies areShow MoreRelatedPerhaps We Are Going Away by Ray Bradbury839 Words   |  3 PagesGovernment, â€Å"Bradburys works form a sustained critique of American imperialism, both historical and contemporary. In Perhaps We Are Going Away (1964), two Indians, an elderly man and a boy, sense something in the air telling them their world has suddenly changed forever. They go looking for the cause of this feeling and find it in a lonely-looking encampment of white men along the seashore, the first Europeans they have ever seen. And in The Martian Chronicles, a Cherokee astronaut specifically linksRead MoreLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 PagesState the claim, and identify the source. 7. The more shocking or bizarre the claim, the more apt you should be to demand more and better evidence for it. a. true b. false123 9. Which is more improbable, a claim that Martians are attacking Earth, or a claim that Martians are attacking Earth and that the next U.S. president will be a woman? Say why. 10. Suppose the following paragraph had appeared in a news story on the web pages of the Washington Post, the major daily newspaper of Washington