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Ray BradburyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Before You Read
Summary
“January 1999: Rocket Summer”
“February 1999: Ylla”
“August 1999: The Summer Night”
“August 1999: The Earth Men”
“March 2000: The Taxpayer”
“April 2000: The Third Expedition”
“June 2001: —And the Moon Be Still as Bright”
“August 2001: The Settlers”
“December 2001: The Green Morning”
“February 2002: The Locusts”
“August 2002: Night Meeting”
“October 2002: The Shore”
“February 2003: Interim”
“April 2003: The Musicians”
“June 2003: Way in the Middle Air”
“2004-2005: The Naming of Names”
“April 2005: Usher II”
“August 2005: The Old Ones”
“September 2005: The Martian”
“November 2005: The Luggage Store”
“November 2005: The Off Season”
“November 2005: The Watchers”
“December 2005: The Silent Towns”
“April 2026: The Long Years”
“August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”
“October 2026: The Million-Year Picnic”
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Mars is the unrealized frontier which brings hope to human minds, and it pays the price for this with human colonization. It is largely representative of the American frontier, and Bradbury draws many parallels between the colonization of Mars and the European conquest of the Americas. While it is a symbol of hope, and unrealized human potential that allows Bradbury to explore how the drive for such horizons motivates the human mind and activates human nature, it also is a symbol of the degradation and destruction faced by the Martians. Their lingering presence, and that of their cities, much like the way Indigenous peoples are utilized in stories of the Western frontier, complicates the moral dimension of the colonizers, forcing the reader to come to terms with the consequences and ravages of so much unbridled settler expansion.
According to the legend of Prometheus, fire is the very first technology humanity masters. Bradbury ties this earliest technology to the most powerful technology in the collection—rockets—in the very first vignette, and the symbol of the rocket and the fire motif complement each other throughout the work. Fire is both positive, fueling the rockets which bring an intellectual summer to Earth in “The Rocket Summer,” and negative, as it consumes the last marker of human achievement, having ravaged the Earth in “There Will Come Soft Rains.
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