The Fourth Expedition Ideas In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles
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Ray Bradbury is a mesmerizing author, known for his satirical writings using the genre of science fiction as a vessel for his ideas. His book The Martian Chronicles is a compilation of short stories. These stories take place in the year early 2000’s (although they were changed to the 2030’s in a later printing). While it may seem somewhat silly now that Bradbury imagined the technology to colonize Mars would exist in the early 2000’s, the details in the story aren’t that important. The year could be 50 years in the future or 50000 years. The science and the technology in the book are not the most important elements to his stories. Bradbury wanted to get his criticisms and ideas out into the world. The story depicting the fourth expedition…show more content… It is one of the most crucial short stories in the book. This story shows perfectly Bradbury’s belief the humans destroy everything they touch. The constant exploitation of resources and people in order to further the wealth, power, and prestige of individuals, will lead to the destruction of society and human kind. Humans will bring about the end of humanity.
There are two apocalyptic type events in the novel. The first being the eradication of the Martians, when chicken pox was brought to Mars on one of the expeditions. The bringing of chicken pox to Mars is a very obvious criticism of imperialism, and a parallel to the bringing of small pox to the Americas. Bradbury isn’t the first science fiction novelist to be critical of imperialism. War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells also criticizes it. However, War of the Worlds was a more subtle criticism. Being outwardly critical of Britain, which was seen as one of the superior nations in the world, would have caused somewhat of an outrage. Instead H. G. Wells had the Martians invade Britain. No other country invading Britain would have been believable to the readers. Only a fictional group of beings could have to power to invade Britain. The death of the Martians is also representative of how humans have a nasty