The book, The Martian illustrates a tale of survival, human dignity, and smart humour. During the near future, a group of astronauts had their mission on Mars cut short as a sandstorm starts to form itself into a massive wave of destruction threatening the lives of these space dwellers. In a dramatic effort to evacuate themselves from the planet, astronaut Mark Watney was left behind after space debris crashed into him, leaving him presumably dead. The storm eventually clears, left alone on a planet that he just spent dozens of days upon, Mark Watney, equipped with his set of smarts, and botany wizardry, is on a mission to survive on a planet with only a small array of materials left to aid him
Throughout the book, Mark Watney exhibits lots
…show more content…
Not only it came as a surprise to the people on Earth, Watney’s crew was involved too. As a prized member of the Ares 3 Mars mission team, the news that Mark Watney was still alive, it brought some light to the crew’s eyes. They rejoiced knowing there is still hope for their fellow adventurer. Rick Martinez and Mark Watney are preferable best friends, by the fact Mark requests Martinez to “check on his parents-“trusting Martinez to care for them as “it won’t be easy talking to a couple about their dead son.” (p.192) The book suggests a romantic relationship between astronauts Chris Beck, and Beth Johansson. Watney is to thank for this relationship since he was responsible who pushes Beck to tell Johansson how he really feels about her. (p.205) Johansson and Alex Vogel are like siblings to Mark. Watney praises Vogel’s chemist powers by suggesting he should be a super-villain (p.200), and how he thinks about Johansson; asking if he could give her a wedge the next time he sees her. (p.196). Perhaps the most heartbreaking are for Commander Melissa Lewis. Being the person who is the commander of the Ares 3 mission, and the one responsible for taking the risk to leave Mark behind; Lewis takes it hard by the news. She feels guilty that Watney was left behind in a barren, unreachable, godforsaken wasteland.” …show more content…
Mark Watney is a quick-thinking problem solver. Mark uses his wits, humour, and knowledge of botany and the sciences to change the environment around him to suit his needs of survival. He created a potato farm using human waste as “fertilizer,” reverse-engineered old Mars rovers, and even used duct tape that actually saved him from
Tracy K. Smith’s collection of poems in Life on Mars is a spectacular work that explores deaths and its effect on family life and the way a person in mourning shift their view of the present and the past. In four sections the pieces are able to see the same concepts in ways that range from realistic and personal to a fantastical and withdrawn. All the pieces work together, asking questions that others answer and providing the reader with a sense of completion upon finishing. Especially in the darker poems Tracy K. Smith provides a clear voice that evokes amazing presence with a conservation of language.
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.
In the first 20 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey you see a group of monkeys going through evolution. The first change you see is that of a leader. In the beginning, each monkey did their own thing, and was not bound to any organization whatsoever. The monkeys did what they want when they wanted. Then the change begins. A single monkey, by himself, rises to the top of a cliff. He stands and screams. The other monkeys notice him screaming and began dancing and rejoicing. They scream and jump around, in what appears to be reverence for their new leader. Stanley Kubrick shows the change very simply, yet its message is still very clear. The monkeys had never shouted as loud or danced as much as they had previously in the film. Their actions confirm that something in fact had changed.
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.
“The Million-Year Picnic” is an excellent example of how people need hope in their life. The family in this story came to Mars to start their life over with another family, “’…We and a handful of others who’ll land in a few days. Enough to start over. Enough to turn away from all that back on Earth…’” (180). The families fled from Earth after the nuclear war destroyed it. The father of the first family, William Thomas, has a hope of a fresh start to the human race on Mars as Martians with the second family. He burns everything that had to do with Earth, including a world map: “’I’m burning way of life, just like that way of life is being burned clean of Earth right now” (179). He did not want his family and future generations to make the same mistakes humans from Earth made. Without his hope, his family would have no reason to keep going, thus, no reason repopulate the human
During the period after the Industrial Revolution the rich Western nations of the world began their imperialist expansion, racing to colonize any “unclaimed” territories. All of the colonized regions had their own culture and government, but because the West was so much stronger, they were taken over. When these areas were finally freed from years of oppression, their society was left in shambles and much of their culture was destroyed. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles explores this theme of imperial expansion as applied to the hypothetical situation of humans colonizing the planet Mars. In the novel, the humans who flock to the planet are portrayed as reckless beings with no care for their new home. They destroy ruins, clear the land, and rebuild a comfortable human society on Mars. The parallels between the Earthlings in the novel and imperialists today are made very apparent, exposing the reader to the idea that humans have been colonizing territories in the wrong way. Instead, Bradbury offers the correct solution by stating that the righteous way to colonize a new land is by preserving and adapting to the native culture of the land, and by becoming a foreigner, or Martian, themselves.
In the beginning of the book, it foreshadows an atomic war on Earth. Humans have broken out into violence all over the Earth. Humanity had to put up with constant bombing and constant chaos. The skies were always red, and there is always pain that flows through the air. Humanity thinks about ways to escape all the chaos to go to a place that might provide a peaceful environment. One place comes to mind; this place is secluded and no brutal environment. It is called Mars. They need a rocket to get Mars. Two astronauts finally go on this expedition. It is considered the first attempt to a new peaceful place.
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
V for Vendetta is a rather graphic novel written by Alan Moore in the late 1980's. The novel takes place in an alternate-reality; one in which Britain is ruled by a fascist government rules over Britain, and the rest of the world is believed to be in ruins due to nuclear war. The main protagonist/villain, depending on your viewpoint, of the story is a man simply called "V", He is a mysterious man and a self-described anarchist who survived a government experiment of a compound called Batch 5. Although his face is never shown in the book, V still draws the reader’s attention by being such a dark presence.
Allen Moore’s sordid depiction of twentieth century life presents a complex world, where the distinction between a virtuous hero and a villainous wrongdoer is often blurred. In stark contrast to the traditionally popularized portrayal of superheroes, whose unquestionably altruistic motives ultimately produce unrealistically idealized results; the realistically flawed characters of Watchmen exist in a multi faceted world characterized by moral ambiguity. America’s imperialistic ambitions have long been justified as an expression of American idealism. Much like the portrayal of superheroes in popular culture, America’s intervention in foreign affairs was portrayed as the result of a clearly defined problem, where American intervention was necessary and consensual. The Watchmen exist in an American reality that does not depend on them as the archetypal hero as demonstrated by the fact that their presence is not necessary to the survival of the world. Collectively the characters of Watchmen parallel the tumultuous relationship that as a superpower the United States of America has with the rest of the world.
The trees, the towns on Mars, and the grass are all described as Earth landscapes. Bradbury's Mars is a mirror of Earth. These plots raise moral issues and reflect on how history may repeat itself. Bradbury portrays Mars as humankind's second world, where we may go after our Earthly existence. In the episode of "April 2000: The third expedition,"Captain John Black's mother said "you get a second chance to live" (pp.44).Lustig's grandmother said "ever since we died" (pp.40).
War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells Homo - Superior or not? War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells is a fictional story about war and mankind’s coming of age. It is also a philosophical novel with many deep meanings underlying the shallow looking one-hundred-eighty-eight page book. The subject of this novel is Science Fiction and there are not many that can even compete with Wells in terms of how superior his word descriptions are. He simply does wonders with the imagination of the reader.
Life is an ongoing process of learning and growing through challenges and experiences. It is mentioned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet, that “unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” Emerson contributes to the idea that change is inevitable and it is key to one’s personal development (Lipovetsky, 2012). Well, such is an essence in the film “The Blind Side” when the protagonist, Michael Oher, changes and grow through adversities, which eventually shaped him into the man he is today. Oher, also known as Big Mike, is a 16 year old African American teenage boy. Oher was one of the twelve children living in a broken extremely impoverished home in the ghettos of Memphis surrounded by drugs.
The space marines seem rough and independent because they all have personalized amour, which may make the audience feel a little uneasy as they may feel the marines are risk takers. The marines’ confident, strong dialogue runs in contrast to the caring manor in which Hick’s says to Newt ‘Don’t touch that honey, its dangerous’, this gives Hicks a depth not shared by his fellow marines, making them expendable. Tension is created when Hudson begins to panic and exclaims: “Those things are going to come in here, just like they did before man…” This scared, on-edge attitude gives the audience a feeling of dread, the close up shot of Hudson’s anxiety-ridden face is unnerving for the audience, however this is soon changed when Ripley interrupts him and reminds him that Newt ‘survived longer than that with no weapons and no training.’ This relieves the audience and promotes a feeling of safety again. The lighting is dark and gloomy which reflects the mood of the crew members.