The Martian’s main character is Mark Watney, a botanist on Mars.
After Watney is abandoned on Mars, he has to find enough food to keep him alive long enough for the next Mars mission, Ares 4, to get there.
The author of The Martian, Andy Weir, did a great job writing it. Although Andy Weir didn’t go to college for writing, The Martian is a huge success because he used humor to keep the reader interested, and suspense to make them keep reading more.
Andy Weir has led an interesting life leading up to him becoming an author.
He studied computer science at the University of California Davis (https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/andy-weir.html). Not only was he into science, but his parents were also scientists. His mom was an engineer, and his dad was a physicist (https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/andy-weir.html). He loved writing, but he wasn’t sure he was so great at it. Before The Martian gained its fame, Weir thought he had failed as a writer (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/11/before-the-martian-andy-weir-thought-hed-failed-as-a-writer.html). Although Weir turned out to be a great writer, he never expected any of it.
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While Weir was writing The Martian, he was able to use humor to make the writing more fun to read.
One example is when his main character, Mark Watney, realizes ‘kilowatt-hours per sol’ is a pain to say: “I’m gonna invent a new scientific unit name. One kilowatt-hour per sol is… it can be anything… um… I suck at this… I’ll call it a “pirate-ninja’” (Watney 230). He conserves pirate-ninjas by doing various things. Another time Weir uses humor is when Mark tells the reader he is stuck on Mars: “The Hab [a house-like place where he lives on Mars] was intact (yay!) and the MAV [Mars Ascension Vehicle] was gone (boo!)” (Weir 6). The MAV is gone, so Mark cannot get back if Hermes [Hermes is the spacecraft that the rest of his crew is in] turns around. Humor is a big element that makes reading The Martian more
interesting. There is a lot of suspense in The Martian that makes the reader want to know what happens next. One example is when Mark’s about to tell the readers something bad happened. “I’m in trouble” (Weir 295). After that he tells us that something bad happened and he starts to panic. Another example is when he realizes he has more air than he needs. “I’ve had a breakthrough with the oxygenator” (Weir 230). He is explaining why he had more air than he thought, so he can last a lot longer. Andy Weir is great at using suspense at the right times to make the reader keep reading. Andy Weir is a talented writer who can effectively put humor and suspense in his writing to keep the readers wanting to read more. He thought he had failed as a writer before The Martian became so successful. He uses great humor to make the story interesting. He also uses suspense to make the reader want to know more and keep reading. Maybe someone from this generation will be the one to civilize Mars...
Andy Weir's book, The Martian, is laced with conflict, both external and internal. From the beginning of the book, Weir shocks the reader with the dramatic opening of "I'm pretty screwed." This is the reader's first glimpse that there is conflict between natures bloodthirsty determination to kill the book's main character Mark Watney, an astronaut, botanist and an engineer, and Mark's desire to survive against all odds. In his daily logs Mark narrates his deathly encounters and near-death experiences with nature. Mark's logs record every event in which nature strives to get the best of him and yet he is able to keep his sense of humor throughout. In one of his logs Mark humorously states " I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very
If the Martian Chronicles had been written in the 1999’s instead of fifty years ago, many issues and problems would change. Ray Bradbury wrote his book in 1946. In it he wrote about problems such as censorship, man’s cruelty to man, and loneliness. Each issue shows up in one or two of his chronicles. All of his issues affect every one of his characters in many different ways.
Humour allows other's to understand a difficult situation without feeling the need to feel uncomfortable about it.
What makes a piece of writing humourus? In “ How I got Smart” by Steve Brody and in “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, both use literary devices to tell a story from a younger perspective. Although they both use figurative language in a humourous way, Brody’s story is silly and has a happy ending and Hughes’s story is somewhat sad and does not end happily thus making Brody’s story overall funnier.
In the book The Martian by Andy Weir, Mark Watney is thought to be dead and left on Mars after a sandstorm during Sol 6. Mark has to survive with what’s left on mars and through many obstacles and tribulations in his fight to survive. The way Mark’s character broadens from start to finish shows that Mark is witty, rational, and driven.
The Martian is a story that involves a visit to the mars, and after that, the astronauts come out of the Mars leaving behind Mark Watney who his real name is Matt Damon. The team assumed Mark was dead after a strong storm. He tried to survive with the remains of the supplier till he was able to launch his way back to the Earth (MacIsaac, 2015). The story is represented in the Novel, and a movie and these two platforms have some similarities and differences. The movie is the representation of what is happening in the book. Therefore, not everything that it is in the book is covered in the one and half film, therefore several scenarios are left out.
Psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists study humor because it is a fundamental culture value, but they still can’t determine why certain things make some people laugh and others not. There are “humor quotient” tests that are designed to measure an individual’s sense of humor, but these tests are questionable. These tests aren’t accurate because almost all humor depends on cultural background knowledge and language skills. Not every person in the whole world, or even in one country share the same background knowledge and skills, therefore they cannot have the same type of humor. “The fact remains that individuals vary in their appreciation of humor” (Rappoport 9). Since humor varies from individual to individual, humor lies in the individual. How successful or funny a joke is depends on how the person receives the joke, humor cannot be measured by a statistical
Steve Almond’s “Funny is the New Deep” talks of the role that comedy has in our current society, and most certainly, it plays a huge role here. Namely, through what Almond [Aristotle?] calls the “comic impulse”, we as a people can speak of topics that would otherwise make many of uncomfortable. Almond deems the comic impulse as the most surefire way to keep heavy situations from becoming too foreboding. The comic impulse itself stems from our ability and unconscious need to defend and thus contend with the feeling of tragedy. As such, instead of rather forcing out humor, he implies that humor is something that is not consciously forced out from an author, but instead is more of a subconscious entity, coming out on its own. Almond emphasizes
The underlining theme in The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is unarguably war. War is the point of origin from all conflicts generated throughout this story. War drives man to Mars, nearly wipes out the Martian population, wreaks havoc on Earth, and forces humans to leave their newly found planet to its previous tenants. War is the driving factor for this whole story; without it, this story never occurred. It gives humanity the courage to travel way out of their comfort zone onto a wasteland of a planet. Being that war follows humans to Mars due to their actions makes humans realize that they cannot escape their own violence.
By surmounting the obstacles placed in front of him, how the hero responds shows his true nature and makes his reward that much more worthwhile. Mars is the ultimate enemy in this novel, and it does not care about Mark’s health or survival. It is therefore up to him to use his own ingenuity and training to figure out how to survive. Things for him start out rough: he wakes up, after being impaled by an antenna ray, to find out his crew has abandoned him on Mars. From here on out, Watney must decide how to grow a food source and make use of the resources leftover from the Ares 3 mission to last until the Ares 4 mission. Furthermore, he survives several explosions to the Hab, multiple grueling trips in the landrover, a giant duststorm, having the rover and attached trailer flipped over while going down an incline, and being launched into space. In a way, Watney essentially achieves immortality status. Being stuck on Mars should have meant automatic death, yet he manages to pull himself together, form a plan, and adapt whenever the plan fails and nearly kills him. This also reveals a lot about his character. With the occasional much-deserved griping, Watney meets every setback with sarcasm and the grim reality that he could die at any point before his rescue. He does not complain or excessively lament about his situation like Väinämӧinen did, but instead
The story of The Martian focuses on the obstacles botanist and astronaut Mark Watney must overcome to survive on the planet Mars. His adventure is filled with fictional and non-fictional elements that are most likely difficult for the normal individual to identify what is actually realistic and what is simply fantasy. After taking a closer look, this film contains a lot more realism to actual science and space travel today. This paper will closely analyze and discuss three accuracies and inaccuracies of the film in relation to the content discussed in ESS 102 lectures, labs, and assignments.
Like Spender, as Captain Wilder began to learn more about the Martian culture he realized how strong their civilization was, and that Earth could definitely adopt some of its principles to better its own civilization. “One day Earth will be as Mars is today... It’s an object lesson in civilization. We’ll learn from Mars” (Bradbury 55). Clearly Captain Wilder knew that the Martian’s way of life was the reason they were so successful until only disease killed them off.
Andy Weir is an amazing artist of a writer who paints a picture in the reader’s mind and whose background greatly affected the way he writes. The Martian contains a large amount of suspense and science fiction which make it an exciting read.
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles shows us not only a different world from Earth and Mars, but also the future of America. Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles depicts the colonization of Mars in terms of the colonization of America. The story is similar to what America experienced, such as thediscovery of America, the invasion of Indian colonies, and the new civilization. Dana's response paper also discussed the colonization of Mars.
Most of us have a tendency to regard a clever sense of humor as the distinction of a person who is good hearted and friendly, someone people feel at ease with. They are "life of the party" we always invite and the co-worker who always has a joke. Everyone has the jocular family member that they always look forward to seeing. We remember the kid in school that always made the class break into laughter. Humor is never forgotten when we reminisce and it is just as amusing as it was the first time.