The Martian Chronicles Chapter Summary

“The Martian Chronicles” by Ray Bradbury, is a collection of short stories that narrates the human colonization of Mars. It all starts in 1999, when the First Expedition lands in Mars, however, it turns out to be a huge disaster since the two passengers were murdered by an angry Martian. The Second Expedition arrives on Mars and they are put the crew into an insane asylum, because the Martians think the Earth men are projecting hallucinations onto them, they are eventually killed too. As expected, the Third Expeditions also fails: 16 men were tricked by Martians, who made them hallucinate their dead loved ones, and the entire crew was ultimately slaughtered. When the Forth Expedition lands in Mars, they find out that most Martians died from the chicken pox, and thus the human colonization begins. During the time following, Mars is quickly being populated by humans coming in rockets who are changing the Martian cities and destroying their culture. In addition, some of the surviving Martians have brief encounters with Earthians. Meanwhile, Earth is going through a crisis, which ultimately leads to an atomic war, causing humans residing in Mars to come back to Earth to their families. Several years later, a family escapes Earth and goes to Mars,

determined to start over, accompanied by another family that will soon arrive. They are the new Martians.
Perhaps one of the main themes of the book is the destruction of a civilization and their culture.

The Earth men arrive to Mars and want everything the way it is on Earth, they completely disregard the previous civilization and fail to appreciate the beauty of it. In “And The Moon Be Still As Bright”, Spender, a member from the Fourth Expedition expresses, “We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things […] and we have to set down somewhere and start fouling it up” (Bradbury 7). Spender realizes that all humans will do in Mars is destroy it, in order to fullfill their own selfish wishes. The author uses this moment to emphasize how humans have a tendency to ruin magnificent creations, without admiring

them.
We can compare the colonization of Mars in “The Martian Chronicles” to the Spaniards colonization of the Aztec civilization. Spaniards came to America for the sole purpose of finding gold and resources, as well as spreading the Catholic faith. The Aztecs had built an incredible civilization full of culture, art and beauty, until the Spaniards arrived and destroyed everything ahead of them, much like humans did with the Martian civilization. In addition, both Earthians and Spaniards brought diseases to Mars and Mexico, respectively, that the locals were not able to endure, killing almost an entire race. Furthermore, both invading parties renamed places to match their own civilization (e.g. humans named a Martian city “New New York”, Spaniards named Mexico “New Spain”) All things considered, the fictional colonization of Mars is exceedingly similar to the Spaniard invasion in Mexico.