Essay, Research Paper: AP Outside Reading -Martian Chronicles

AP Outside Reading Assignment
The Martian Chronicles By: Ray Bradbury
Dan Smith October 22,1997
I. Setting
A. Locations
1. Ohio, small town next to rocket launch sites
2. Mars, a large desert area with canals that harbors "dead cities"
3. Mars, town which has home of Yll and Ylla
4. Mars, landing site next to one of the canals
5. Martian insane asylum
6. Dreamlike little town which is the memories of the crew projected onto the landscape of Mars
7. Luggage shop
8. City surrounded by a rural are with just one house standing
B. Time
1. Each chronicle takes place during a different month and year arranged in chronological order from January 1999 to October 2026
C. Tones
1. Sarcastic
2. Grim
3. Sensual
4. Humor
5. Joy
6. Irony
7. Very emotional

II. Major Character Identification
A. No one major character
1. No one character stays on stage throughout the entire book
2. There are many significant characters for the chronicle in which they are in
B. Ella
1. Warm, friendly, outgoing all shown by her telepathy
2. First Martian introduced
3. Feels lack of love from her husband
4. Her dreams of Captain York cause Yll, her husband to become jealous, and use some ruinous weapon to destroy the rocket.
C. Captain Black
1. Old, experienced, with many years of wisdom to recall back upon
2. Has the ability to rethink problems over and over until he finds the answer
D. Edward Black (unreal)
1. Martian responsible for keeping Captain Black deceived about the "dream town"
2. Talented mind reader who had to be very smart: had to read the mind of the captain quickly in order to provide information so he would not get suspicious
E. Tomas Gomez
1. Curious, when meeting the strange Martian he is very inquisitive
2. Open-minded to the different opinions, different vehicle, and appearance of the Martian
3. Makes no judgement of the Martian, after the meeting he just continues on his way
F. Mr. Teece
1. Always needs to feel superior to someone around him
2. Treats his wife badly
3. Shoots white people and at nights he mob-kills them
G. Stendahl
1. Passionate about his ideas about free thinking
2. Energetic
3. Lives his life by his own rules
4. Imaginative and creative, created a temple of horror to express his ideas
5. Cunning knew the plan of Garrett and still avoids a dangerous situation by using planning, timing, and creativity
H. Hathaway
1. Equals large intelligence of Stendahl in that he also creates robots
2. Solves the mystery of the disappearance of the Martians
3. Replaces his family with robots incapable of sadness
4. Could be considered insane but in touch with reality

III. Major Conflict
A. No major conflict
1. There is no one major conflict, there are two important ones throughout the Chronicles.
B. Ideological conflict
1. Spender versus the crew of the ship
2. Spender believes that Mars must be kept as it is, and must not be changed to conform to the people from Earth.
3. Originally, the outsider of the group, spender spent time in some of the dead Martian towns, and his opinion changed and he set out to kill the crew and every expedition until he died
4. He refused to compromise his views and hunted down and killed most of the group, but he was killed by the order of the captain
5. The captain had a meeting with Spender and agreed with his views but the captain was in charge and he believed he must do his duty
C. Social conflict
1. Conflict between Stendhal and Pikes and the censors
2. Stendahl believed in free thinking and books of fantasy
3. He rebelled against it by building the House of Usher, a temple of horror that showed in detail the writings of Edgar Allen Poe
4. Garrett the head of the censors sent a robot which Stendhal killed, and sent back a robot that looked like him
5. Stendahl figured out that he was fooled by Garrett and tricked Garrett into a trap which killed him.

IV. Other conflicts
A. Conflict between groups
1. There were different groupings of the crews
2. Spender was an outsider to the group
B. Conflict within the individual
1. Spender went through a change in which he had a conflict of ideas
2. He was debating between the killing for his beliefs and the repulsion of his killings
C. Racial conflict
1. Tecee acts as a bigot, cruel
2. He tells that he kills white people, and it is revealed later by Silly
V. Climax
A. Unity
1. Although The Martian Chronicles is written in a series of short chronicles, there is still a plot that is maintained through the setting
B. The Martian
1. The climax occurs in one of the last chronicles in the book called The Martian
2. In the chronicle, the reader is introduced to a man named LaFarge and his wife, Anna. The couple moved to Mars and forgot about their dead son, Tom. The Martian comes into the couple's life one night and projects the knowledge that he is actually their son and he never died, but LaFarge knows. One night the family goes to see a movie and Tom disappears. LaFarge finds that he is now morphed into a dead member of another family. It seems as if the Martian appears as a dead family member or someone from the "seers" past. When all the people trying to get him to be their lost relative caught Tom or acquaintance, he went into some morphing frenzy and melted.
3. After this the atomic war on Earth started and the climax was complete
VI. Resolution
A. Going Home
1. The inhabitants of Mars learn of the atomic war going on back on Earth
2. People leave Mars to return to Earth to support or fight in the war
B. Destruction of Earth
1. Earth is left in ruins by the atomic war
2. Mars is almost completely deserted
3. There is one family left that flew to Mars with a rocket and they found a home that is completely automated
4. The parents of the family have to tell the children that mankind destroyed itself, but there are other families that should be coming to Mars.
5. Mankind gets another chance through this family to start on Mars
VII. General themes
A. Metamorphosis
1. Spender changes his views and is overwhelmed by a feeling that humans will destroy the ancient cities of Mars to conform it to what they want it to be.
2. This metamorphosis or change causes him to try and kill the members of the expedition.
3. Also used in how the Martians are able to "morph" their bodies to another form.
B. Deception
1. The Martians deceive the Third Expedition into thinking they were in Green Bluff, Illinois.
2. Garrett deceived Stendahl by sending him a robot replica of himself, and then Stendahl returned the favor by tricking Garrett into a trap that killed him.
3. The Martian deceived LaFarge and Anna into thinking he was their dead son.
C. Perception/Point of View
1. From the perception of LaFarge and Anna the Martian appeared to be their son, Tom. From the perception of Spaulding, the Martian was their daughter, Lavina
2. In the chronicle Night Meeting Tomas Gomez perceived that he was in the present which was 2002, from the perception of the Martian it was the present also, but in reality Gomez was from the future and the Martian was from the past. The two met in some rip in time where the two periods were one for a short time
D. Insanity
1. The crew of the Second Expedition was thought to be insane by the Martians. The Martians could inflict physical hallucinations that could be perceived by the five senses. Therefore, when the men came and said they were from Earth, the Martians thought that the group was another hallucination which seemed to be commonplace among the society.
2. To a certain degree, Stendahl was insane also. His House of Usher was apparently incredible horrific and scary. To design this he had to be a type of insane genius
VIII. Specific themes
A. When the real and unreal come together, disaster will follow
1. Third expedition, when the entire group was fooled by the Martians into the hallucinatory dream town, which resulted in the crew dying
2. When the Martian projected himself as the dead family members of the families, it ended in him dying as a result of it
3. When the four members of the Second Expedition were killed because they were thought to be producing unreal hallucinations, it also resulted in the death
B. Technology, if used correctly can coexist with nature in harmony, if misused or overused it can destroy nature
1. The nature of man was to build and create just because something could be built, this need to continuously create caused the destruction of Earth
2. The Martians had technology coexist with nature and they were an intelligent, well-developed society destroyed by smallpox, through no fault of their own
IX. Major strengths of the novel
A. Settings
1. The story has no main characters that participate all through the story, so the book uses the setting to keep the plot moving.
2. Masterfully detailed the Martian landscape, and hallucinations, easy to understand and picture
3. The setting is what keeps the unity throughout the novel
4. The tones used help the reader to experience what happens
a. Horror- when the entire crew of the Third Expedition was murdered
b. Sadness- when the parents have to tell their children that Earth was destroyed
B. Characterization
1. Although the characters in the novel only appear in the one chronicle, Bradbury uses point of views (omniscient, third-person) to give the reader insight to the thoughts and feelings so he/she can understand the character better
2. Ylla
a. The reader is told what is in her dreams
b. The reader is told how she feels toward the man from Earth and how she doesn't feel loved by her husband
3. Captain Black
a. Describes his happiness to see what he thought was his dead family
b. Describes the horror when Black realizes he has been tricked