The Martian Chronicles
In The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, a story is told about the Earthlings colonizing and destroying Mars and its people. Throughout the story, parallels can be drawn from this colonization to others that have happened through the course of history. For example, people of Earth brought diseases, such as chicken pox, to Mars that eventually killed most of the population. The Europeans also brought diseases from their home to the Americas causing the deaths of many natives. Although there were some individuals who tried to help the natives and even resistance from natives, the force of the colonizers was too strong to overcome. After Mars was settled, all remnants of the Martian culture were eliminated. The geographic structures were renamed, and cities were rebuilt to Earth standards, children even played in the ashes of dead Martians as if they had never existed. Again this can be paralleled to the colonization of the Americas, when Europeans created their own cities and destroyed the culture of many peoples. Even with this gloomy story about the destruction of an entire race, Bradbury is still able to tell it with beautiful language and imagery, and with his point of view coming from the 1940s, it is also interesting to learn how he imagined life today. This science-fiction story is defiantly an eye-opener, to see how the human race tends to react to other cultures.
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