Theme Of Ignorance In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles

In the book The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, it says, "We landed over a year ago, remember?" "No." "And all of you were dead, all but a few. You're rare, don't you know that?" "That's not true." "Yes, dead. I saw the bodies. Black, in the rooms, in the houses, dead. Thousands of them." "That's ridiculous. We're alive!" "Mister, you're invaded, only you don't know it. You must have escaped" (Bradbury 83). This previous sentence shows how ignorance is fatal. The fact that ignorance is fatal is shown when the humans come to Mars and make the aliens conform to them like they did the Indians. This is also shown in Usher II when they repeat the what happened in “The House of Usher.”The last place this is shown is in Night meeting where the …show more content…
In going and living new lives on Mars, the humans made the Martians conform as said in the Naming of Names, “They began to plan people's lives and libraries; they began to instruct and push about the very people who had come to Mars to get away from being instructed and ruled and pushed about” (Bradbury 103).This quote from the book shows how ignorance can be fatal by using previous knowledge of
Laughery 2 how the humans treated the Indians when coming to America. If the humans would have been better versed in the history that happened and not so ignorant maybe they would not have repeated their same mistakes. The second example of how ignorance is fatal is shown in Usher II. In Usher II, they repeat the same scenario that happened in “The House of Usher”. In both of the stories of what happened in Usher, there is no happiness in the house. In the end, the houses destroy as said on page 118, “They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack down the middle, as with an earthquake”(Bradbury 118). If the humans would not have been ignorant of what happened in “The House of Usher” they might not have repeated those