Study Guide for Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles (1950)
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Study guide for Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950) Introduction (Wait until this page is completely downloaded before clicking.) Clearly Bradbury had a certain vision of the Mars in which these stories areset, a fantasy world based far more on Edgar Rice Burroughs novels (APrincess of Mars and its many sequels) than on contemporary science.Bradbury returned to this fantasy Mars in other stories not included in thisvolume ("The Exiles," "The Fire Balloons" and "TheOther Foot" in The Illustrated Man, "Night Call,Collect" and "The Lost City of Mars" in I Sing the BodyElectric,; and "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" in AMedicine for Melancholy). To a certain degree, Bradbury is also writingto counteract the image of a menacing Mars as portrayed first in H. G. Well's War of the Worlds. In this work humans from Earth play the roleof "invaders from outer space." The Martian Chronicles is best read as a collection of linked shortstories rather than as a novel. Although such collections are unusual in"mainstream" fiction they are common in science fiction. Bradbury hasalways been more of a short story writer than a novelist, and most of thestories can be read separately from their present context. When that fact isrealized, some of the inconsistencies and contradictions in The MartianChronicles diminish in importance. The tone of the stories variesmarkedly. Some are very much in the mode of the horror tales which he had atfirst specialized in (collected in The October Country ), andothers are earnest parables of human folly. The Martians sometimes behave likemonsters and sometimes like saints. A collection-novel such as this is oftencalled a "fix-up" in SF, and Bradbury has clearly tried to fix thisone up by adding connective bits between the main stories to smooth the joins;but that this smoothing-out process was not entirely successful is made clearby the fact that when the television miniseries was created the scriptwritersfelt the need to impose far more unity on the stories than Bradbury had. But ifthe stories are considered as variations on a theme rather than as chapters ofa unified novel, these variations should cease to be troubling. One striking feature of many of these stories is the progressive politicalvalues which they embrace. Written during the height of the Cold Waranti-Communist hysteria, they criticize imperialism, racism, environmentalpollution, censorship, and the nuclear arms race. Bradbury was not alone.Several SF writers critiqued smug assumptions about the superiority of Americanvalues during that period. But that such a volume could become the single mostwidely- read SF book during the fifties is a tribute to the charm of Bradbury'sstyle, a compound of sentimental nostalgia, idealism, and above all delight inthe pleasures of the senses. Note how often colors, textures, smells, and soundsare used in these stories to bring a scene to life. But the qualities which made Bradbury America's most beloved SF writer concealother qualities more often associated with horror fiction: deep cynicism aboutfamily life, pessimism about progress, and disdain for people in the mass to adegree that approac hes misanthropy (note his occasional preference for robotsover human beings).His work reflects an adolescent discomfort with sexualitycommon among "Golden Age" SF writers, often viewing love and marriageas a trap to be evaded. Dialogue is also sometimes a weakness in his work, withspeeches made more for poetic effect than for realism, and too many of thecharacters speaking the same peculiar Bradburian dialect (though similarcomplaints could be made about many fine writers, William Faulkner, forinstance). These stories made Bradbury's reputation. They were embraced by many readers who never opened another SF book, so that many hard-core fans were jealous of his success and disdained him as not the "real thing." With the passage of time, the book has been accepted with all its flaws as a SF classic whose charm and vividness still appeal. Many of the stories are as artfully crafted as anything in the genre. Rocket Summer, The Summer Night,,The Earth Men, The Third Expedition, And the Moon Be Still as Bright, The Green Morning, The Locusts, Night Meeting, The Musicians, Way in the Middle of the Air, The Naming of Names, Usher II, The Martian, The Luggage Store, The Off Season, The Silent Towns, The Long Years, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Million-Year Picnic, Rocket Summer Bradbury knew as well as anyone that no conceivable number of rocket launches could literally change the weather in this way; this is simply a fantasy, a tone poem evoking enthusiasm for the coming space age. Ylla What features of this story make the setting and the characters al ien and strange? Identify some specific "exotic" touches. What is Martian technology like? What features make them seem all too human, even old-fashioned? What are the unspoken assumptions about men's and women's roles in this story? What kind of relations hip does this couple have? "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes" (set to a poem by Ben Jonson) was a sentimental popular song, old-fashioned even in 1950. If all Martians have last names that consist of a letter of the alphabet, there would seem to be only 26 possible names rather restrictive. Can you think of any explanation for this pattern? The Summer Night How is this linking tale similar in theme to "Ylla?" "She Walks in Beauty" was written by Lord Byron in 1815 as a deliberate contrast to the tradition praising only "fair" (that is, blonde, light-skinned) women as beautiful. What qualities in the four lin es quoted make it appropriate for its use here? Is the Martian ability to read thoughts an advantage or a disadvantage? Identify and discuss a familiar process that takes place among human beings for which this story could be read as a metaphor. The Earth Men How is Bradbury working against the standard expectations of a "first contact" story? Belief in telepathy (direct mind-to-mind communication of thoughts) has little or no scientific basis, but it is a staple of science fiction because it makes possible int eresting plots and because as here it solves the knotty problem of how alien races can communicate with each other. What prevents the Martians from realizing that the men are really from Earth? Why might people who believe in "flying saucers" and other alien contacts like this story? In the previous stories the Martians had no problem in perceiving that the thoughts invading their minds were alien; can you come up with any explanation for why they might now view the earth people as manifestations of their own minds? The Third Expedition Bradbury nostalgically evokes his early 20th-century midwestern small-town upbringing in many stories, notably those collected in Dandelion Wine. Yet for all its sentimental appeal, he also repeatedly uses the setting for the evocation of nightmares. Here he portrays an America which by 1950 was already vanishing and would be quite unlike the background familiar to any probable astronaut young enough to be sent to Mars in theyear 2000. Because we are reading this story long after it was written, this incongruity strikes us more forcefully than it would have struck those who first read it, for they shared Bradbury's no stalgic memory. How does he rationalize his use of this setting? The music mentioned was popular during the first two decades of this century. When this story was first published, it was titled "Mars is Heaven." Explain this title. The Martians in "The Ear th Men" seem to have acted out of confusion rather than malice. Is this true of the Martians in this story? What do you think their motives are? Why might those motives have developed since the time of the earlier story? And the Moon Be Still as Bright T he title comes from the Lord Byron poem, "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" (1817) which is usually read as a meditation on the inevitability of death. What might its meaning be in this story? This story seems modeled on World War II movies about a small troop of men from various ethnic backgrounds faced with a dangerous environment. The token minority figure here is a Native American named "Cheroke." In the TV version, he was made into an African-American; but why is Bradbury's choice especially appropriate fo r this story? To what historic event does the death of the Martians correspond? The crew seems much like that of a traditional adventure novel: rough, ill-educated sailors, very unlike the astronauts of our day. Aside from the question of realism, why migh t Bradbury have wanted to use a group of "average guys" as his explorers? What is the point of Spender's speech about the tendency of Earth Men to rename everything? (This theme is continued later in the story "The Naming of Names.") What critique does Spe nder make of American civilization as regards art in his final conversation with the captain? What does Spender see as the two cultural forces that clashed on Earth but which the Martians succeeded in blending? How did Martians answer the question, "What is the meaning of life?" according to Spender? In 1950 tape recording on reels was brand-new cutting-edge technology (brought back from conquered Germany by GIs), so Bradbury has the Martians record their music in this futuristic fashion. What is the signif icance of the captain's meditations on majority rule while he is hunting down Spender? What is the attitude of this story toward democracy? The Green Morning Even in 1950, it was known that Mars had little oxygen in its atmosphere.