The Martian Chronicles 223environment. Bradbury’s characters are cut off from
their ecosystem and their wider system of social sup-
port. They do not know how the planet works; for
example, they plant seeds only to see huge towering
trees minutes after a harsh rain. They do not know
how the Martians think: it is only in casting them-
selves off the cliff that they decipher the Martians’
pacifist intentions. Most horrifyingly, they do not
understand each other. Husbands crush their wives’
dreams, astronauts kill each other at point-blank
range, and a son looks speculatively at the alien pres-
ence, half known and half understood, of his father.
They cannot ultimately trust their own perceptions
of time, space, or even sanity. Finally, Bradbury’s
characters, both Martian and human, face the alien-
ation of living without their past (as time changes
all things) and without those they love (as relatives
and friends die).
The Martian Chronicles is thus not really about
Mars at all: it is about the human condition and our
response to it. As the stories progress, it is clear that
in this book, the human response to alienation is
largely unhelpful. Bradbury’s characters deny, avoid,
and repress their extreme loneliness and separation.
They build huge cities, sprouting like evil fungi on
an unknown planet, in order to reproduce Earth,
the one Known Thing, and thus escape the great
Loneliness. They cast aside all caution, all training,
and all reason in order to enjoy the brief fiction
that their loved ones have perhaps not died at all
but still remain somewhere and will welcome them
home. They kill in order to regain the sole attention
of their spouse, and they crush the dreams of oth-
ers in order to retain their own sense of superiority.
They would destroy someone else’s child in order
to have their own back again. They cover up loss,
estrangement, and grief; they resist facing their own
alienation and ironically increase it by seeking to
destroy it. They vomit on foreign temples and dance
on the dead bodies of alien beings. These examples
of alienation culminate with the destruction of
cultures and planets: the Martian culture is dying
from within prior to the Earth invasion; the Earth
invaders destroy the Martian culture and reproduce
their own on Mars; the colonization of Mars fails;
an atomic war destroys Earth, and the colonists see
it explode before their eyes.
Yet Bradbury also gives us alternative pathways
toward dealing with alienation. The answers lie in
bits and pieces throughout some of the stories. They
include respect and reverence for a culture other
than one’s own, as exemplified by the rebel Spender
and the missionary Father Peregrine. Even when
the realities are so different as to defy connection,
the Martian and Tomas keep to polite civilities.
Some Martians manifest consistently nonviolent
approaches to the colonizers, even against the mul-
tiple murders and widespread destruction com-
mitted by Sam Parkhill. One of the most positive
yet horrifying stories is told through the eyes of a
young teenage boy, who is made to look into the
waters of an old canal and realize that he, indeed,
is the Martian. Bradbury’s last chapter promises a
new beginning for Mars and for the human race. It
carries the seeds of its own conflict (father-son ten-
sion and too few females) as well as its own hope, as
alienation is finally dealt with not in terms of denial,
grasping fear, and a frenzy to duplicate the past, but
rather with acceptance of loss and appreciation for
what is new.
Anna MinorelOve in The Martian Chronicles
Early in The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury gives
us a description of failed love. In “Ylla,” Mr. and
Mrs. K had once enjoyed one another’s company,
in harmony with the colors of their planet and its
slow movement of beauty, but they are “not happy
now.” Mrs. K becomes trapped within her beauti-
ful home. Mr. K is familiar with what she does and
never does, and yet he does not truly know her.
His sterile knowledge of her cannot abide secrets.
Her emotions and interest come alive only in her
dreams of a stranger who will come from the sky.
When those dreams become reality, her husband
kills that stranger. By the end of the chapter, Mrs.
K doesn’t know her own feelings and is thus denied
intimacy even with herself. She cries uncontrollably
without knowing the reason why. Her response to
her inner and outer isolation is to cry, tremble,
and repeat her husband’s promise that she’ll “be all
right tomorrow.”
A second example of failed love occurs in “June
2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright.” Real love