MC from Peter Fleming

In Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”, there are many similarities between the colonization of Mars and the European colonization of the Americas. For starters, both sets of colonizers have very similar motivations to leave their homes, motivations such as war, poverty, and governmental oppression. Another way that the sets of colonists are similar is in the way that they both construct their colonies in the likeness of their mother country or planet, the Martian colonists planting trees from earth and giving their cities names such as “Detroit II” and the British colonists giving names to their colonies such as “New England” and “New York”. Small pox was another tool that the colonists used to assert their dominance in new lands. The Europeans used small pox both intentionally and accidentally to wipe out thousands of natives, and the vast majority of Martians were killed by the earthling’s introduction of the disease. These are but a few of the similarities that can be found among the European and Earthling colonists. Lastly the mentality of the colonists was one of arrogance, or that the colonists were superior and worthy of respect. In either of the two cases, these mentalities often lead to misunderstandings which sometimes spiraled into violence, causing the destruction of the colonists, the natives, or sometimes both.