Dark They Were And Golden-Eyed Sparknotes

A Summary of Ray Bradbury’s, “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed”

Ray Bradbury’s short story, “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed” is a fictitious interpretation of what life would be like for a group of people living in a colony on Mars. The story begins with a family of 5 -- Harry, Cora, Dan, Laura, and David -- who have just landed on Mars with hundreds of other people. Harry immediately has his doubts and wants to leave, but the rest of his family convinces him they should stay. The next key event in the story is Laura coming and informing the rest of her family that atomic bombs (due to what they call “The Atom War”) have hit New York, subsequently destroying all of the shuttles capable of travel to Mars. After this news, the entire family becomes distraught, realizing that they are now stranded. Harry resolves that the family should simply continue with life as they have been, raising crops and tending to

each other.
After an unknown amount of time, Harry is pondering to himself while tending to the garden when he notices that something is “wrong” with the blossoms on the peach tree.

He calls his wife (Cora) over, and he begins to examine the rest of the garden and notices the rest of the plants have this “wrongness” to them. The most egregious of the plants are the roses and grasses, which have turned green and purple respectively. Two days later, Dan calls the rest of the family over to view their cow, which has begun growing a third horn. At this point, Harry begins panicking and realizes that they have to leave, lest they change themselves. Harry decides that he must construct a rocket so both him and his family can escape. The people he talks to it about think he is being paranoid, but they do offer parts and blueprints. This is when Harry realizes that everyone, himself included, has already begun to change. Everyone he talks to now has yellow-gold eyes, and they are taller and thinner. Even as cautious as he was being, Harry’s blue eyes now have flecks of gold in

them.
The next key event occurs when one morning, Harry wakes up and utters, “’Iorrt. Iorrt,’” to himself. He realizes that it is a Martian word, and calls the archeologist, who knows its definition. Later, while on a hiking and swimming trip, Dan states, “’Utha,’” to his father, and he knows that it means “father” in Martian. Dan then asks if he can change his name to “Linnl,” and his parents accept. In a few weeks, everyone in the colony decides to move to the villas in the mountains. Harry resists at first due to his desire to finish the rocket, but he is eventually persuaded to come. After moving into the village, Martian becomes more prevalent, and it begins to replace English. At this point, no one in the Bittering family has a desire to move back into the valley. They begin to refer to the colonies as, “’Such odd, such ridiculous houses Earth people built.’”
Five years later, a rocket arrives on Mars, and they proclaim that they have won the war and have come to rescue the colonists. The colonists, however, are nowhere to be found, and all that remains is remnants of a town. The new colonists then discover the “native” Martians, and they realize that the Martians are quite friendly and have an incredible capacity for learning English. The Martians have no idea what happened to the colonists. The new colonists decide to settle in, and they begin to construct mining sites, bacteriological specimens taken, and remapping and renaming of landmarks.