“Don't You Have a Feeling That This Has All Happened Before
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현대영어영문학 제60권 2호 Modern Studies in English Language & Literature (2016년 5월) 273-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.17754/MESK.60.2.273 The Martian Chronicles and Re-imagining the Frontier Myth Yoo, Jihun (Georgia Southern University) Yoo, Jihun. “The Martian Chronicles and Re-imaging the Frontier Myth.” Modern Studies in English Language & Literature. 60.2 (2016): 273-88. The exploration of Mars has always been the major thematic concern for science fiction. The Martian Chronicles delineates the process of human colonization of Martian landscape and establishes itself as a mainstream speculative fiction. It is difficult not to ignore how the novel recalls the imagery associated with the historical aspects in American history—especially, the early Western expansion and the frontier experience. This paper not only explores the ways in which the novel engages with the frontier myth but also investigate the issues regarding the underlying attitudes of the frontier consciousness. Relying on David Mogen's and Richard Slokin’s inquiries on the frontier mythology, in this paper, I suggest that The Martian Chronicles not only enacts the frontier myth but also maintains its traditional position within a thinly veiled conventions of speculative science fiction that ultimately re-imagines the frontier myth. (Georgia Southern University) Key Words: frontier myth, Mars, colonization, science fiction I. Introduction In dealing with American science fiction and delineating its connection with the frontier story, Carl Abbott notes that the genre “lies at an intersection where the imperial romance or adventure story meets the American Western” and “extends the western openness to infinity” (12). In a similar way, Dianne Newell pointed out that the “links between the frontiers of science fiction and those of American myth and history” (50) are established. Therefore it is not unsurprising to find research that 274 Yoo, Jihun interrogates the correlation between (speculative) interplanetary frontiers, American history and myth of the traditional Western frontiers. Carl Abbott is one of the scholars that traces the frontier tradition onto the extraterrestrial frontiers of space in American fiction. Similarly to Newell’s above observation, Abbott explains that the reason behind science fiction’s repeated internalizing of the stories that Americans tell about the development of the West is because “the imagery and mythology of the western frontier" (243) are so pervasive in American culture. If both Newell and Abbott are correct—if post-WWII space frontier fiction was and is deeply “embedded in frontier myth” (Newell 50), then it is logical to read The Martian Chronicles within the frontier tradition. Thus, relying on Newell’s and Abbott’s hint, but, at the same time, diverging from their generic formula, I suggest that the novel not only reenacts the frontier myth but also by doing so paradoxically collaborates in perpetuating the myth’s position by re-imagining the frontier myth. Implicit in the myth, however, are ideas that promote the dominant ideological pattern of American imperialism: the colonization (or industrialization) of Martian landscape, subjugation and elimination of Martians, and perpetuation of imperialism in new frontiers. II. The Martian Landscape and the Frontier Paradigm The idea of Mars is more complicated then a mere correspondence to observational reality of Mars. It rather serves to unveil mythological and ideological pattern of America surrounding its conception. The Martian Chronicles should be analyzed to consider the mythological, mythical and folkloric elements encoded in the chronicles of Martian colonization. The Martian Chronicles and Re-imagining the Frontier Myth 275 According to Frederick Turner, the frontier is the “meeting point between savagery and civilization,” (2) as Mars in The Martian Chronicles was a landscape where the savagery of Martians is met with civilized Earthmen. Just as Indians were viewed as savage beasts for Turner, Martians were treated as savage beasts in Mars. For Turner, words like “civilization” (2) and “custom” (9) are metaphors for the Old World whereas “savagery” (3) and “primitive wilderness” (3) stand in for the New World. Similarly, the novel positions human beings as representing order, morality and common-sense, whereas it posits Martians as representing savagery, immorality and irrationality. Investigating the frontier paradigm within the American literary tradition, David Mogen defines the frontier myth in terms of the opposition between civilization and frontier (25). In the frontier tradition the New World is considered “unknown, exotic, uncultivated, and peopled by . savages” (Slotkin 29)—an illustration analogous to what the Martians represents in The Martian Chronicles. In the frontier tradition the Old World is considered a “civiliz[ed] society ordered on rigid principles” (Slotkin 51)—an illustration corresponding to what human civilization symbolizes in the novel. Faithful to its own title, The Martian Chronicles, chronicles the colonization of Mars, and this colonization and industrialization process becomes synonymous with distinctive group of settlers’ view and treatment of the Martian frontier. While, in general, the Martian frontier is considered a metaphor for the “New World Garden” the novel displays a variety of characters to illustrate how ideas about the Martian frontier differed. Obviously, the Martian landscape parallels the Western landscape of the frontier in urging settlers to seek new opportunities as a gateway of escape. Indeed, for Turner, the Western frontier did “furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence” (26). The association between Turner’s frontier and the 276 Yoo, Jihun novel’s treatment of the Martian frontier becomes obvious if we consider the scene where Janice’s and Leonora’s imminent journey to Mars in the year 2034 recalls the frontier experience in 1849: where “ventriloquists, preachers, fortune-tellers, fools, scholars, gamblers” with “their dreams” (147) journey to a “New World” (150)—Mars. As they walk the streets of their hometown, they cannot help but to think that their and other people’s immigration to Mars is inexplicably a cyclical moment of history that “in their time the smell of buffalo, and in [her] time the smell of the Rocket” (159): are all about the frontier, whether Western or Martian. A small chapter titled “The Settlers” is evidenced to manifest this idea. That just as the American continent was considered to be the “New World Garden” for early settlers, Mars is viewed and treated much the same suggests the perpetuation of the images of the Garden projected into the new frontier landscape (in our case, Mars). To elucidate, just as westward expansion with its new opportunities furnished perennial rebirth of American life (Turner 2), interplanetary expansion to, and colonization of, Mars, as the New World Garden, is thought to provide these frontiersman with material and spiritual revitalization. In a similar fashion, Wayne L. Johnson recognizes the novel’s sporadic “touches reminiscent of classical mythology—golden fruits, fluted pillars, wine trees” (113) of Martian landscape before its colonization and industrialization by Earthmen. This observation is seconded by Carl Abbott as he points out that the novel features a character who “reenact[s] the story of John Chapman” (82), (a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed) settling “the imagined planets of science fiction” by an “entry into the homesteading theme in science fiction” (84). It is through the eyes and efforts of Benjamin Driscoll, a kind of like Johnny Appleseed figure—an early American pioneer man who introduced apple trees to the American soil—in planting “trees and grass” (103) that the Martian terrain is transformed from an arid “land of black loam” (103). The Martian Chronicles and Re-imagining the Frontier Myth 277 While this seems to be reversing Turner’s idea of social progress and evolution which transforms primitive industrial society . [in]to manufacturing civilization” (2) since Driscoll manages to build a horticultural landscape instead of industrialized towns and cities, nevertheless here, Driscoll’s “seeds and sprouts” (104) functions as an “European germs developing in an American environment” (Turner 3) that would ultimately transform the wilderness into a “manufacturing civilization” (Turner 2). Ironically, while Driscoll’s seeds and sprouts, in a single day, flourish and become a full forest to produce pure oxygen turning a valley into a river delta (106), the forest, nevertheless, serves as an infrastructure that paves the way for industrialization and colonization of Mars. Not surprisingly, readers are provided with a repetition of images recalling the American industrial development history in the next chapter titled “The Locusts.” Like locusts, migrating, swarming and devouring everything in their path in Biblical proportions men “men hammered up framed cottages . with sizzling neon tubes and yellow electric bulbs” (107). One cannot help noticing how this passage recalls Turner’s description of waves of emigrants who “purchase the lands, add field to field, clear out the roads . build mills, school-houses, court-houses” (Turner 15). III. The Colonization of the Other However the theme of justifying the colonization of the Other (the Martian landscape and Martians themselves) is achieved through the imperialistic portrayal of the Martians as the savage and monstrous Other. Investigating