Layered Question Redux: Response

"How does Harry Bittering react to being stranded on Mars and to the gradual assimilation of his friends and family? discuss how his reaction relates to the concept of "the other." What might his reaction suggest about the social climate of the United States in 1949 (postwar culture)?"

In the beginning of Ray Bradbury's short story "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed," harry Bittering is filled with dread, fearing the loss of his identity, soul, intellect, and past (131) - in short, fearing change. This fear is introduced by his panic when confronted with the behaviors of the Earth plants growing up in Martian soil. He clings to these fears throughout the majority of the story, and his reaction to the carefree men in the town exemplifies it: "Bittering wanted to cry. "You've to work with me. If we stay here, we'll all change. The air. Don't you smell it? Something in the air..."" (135).

Bittering's fears are also grounded in the concept of "otherness" or "the other." As a character, he identifies strongly as an earth man - "...We don't belong here. We're Earth people. This is Mars. It was meant for the Martians. For heaven's sake, Cora, let's buy tickets for home!" (131) - and the foreignness of Mars causes him to fear the loss of that identity. Rather than fearing the other in and of itself, he fears becoming the "other," fears being assimilated into the "other". This quality strikes me as odd: it wasn't a dynamic I was expecting. It becomes even stranger as the other characters are assimilated around him, introducing a duality to the qualities of "otherness" in the story - even before the people of the town are 'dark and golden-eyed,' Bittering is the only one who seems to be bothered by the turn of events in the war. He has effectively become the "other" as far as the town is concerned, but in his eyes the 'foreign' entity is the majority.

This story seems, to me, to have a lot to say about McCarthyism/the Second Red Scare. "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" was published in 1949, in the second year of the decade-long event, which fostered an atmosphere of fear and nationalism in the United States. But before I continue in that vein, there's one bit of housework to do: where are the Bitterings from? Other than identifying as "Earth people," there is no explicit comment on where the family comes from. On 132 it's made clear that the Rockets in New York are destroyed and that the family  is therefore stranded on Mars, and on 140 Cora asks her daughter, "What about your New York dresses?" implying that they at least passed through that city. However, based on the names chosen by the settlers for the landscape (Hormel, Roosevelt, Ford, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller) it's probably safe to say that all of the Martian settlers are Americans.

I think that the family's origin is important because this story comments on McCarthyism in more than one way. The concept of immigrating to another location (country or planet) and fearing the forces already in place recalls the heavy suspicion automatically placed on immigrants to America in this time. This concept is demonstrated by  Bittering's conception of "ghosts" and his bidding the hidden Martians to "Come down, move us out! We're helpless!" (134). By making the Americans the immigrants causes a reversal in this construction. They are no longer staunch in their right to the place they are in.

The name-changing scene on 139 is quite the contrast. After Dan asks his parents if he can go by the name "Linnl" instead, Bittering "...thought of the silly rocket, himself working alone, himself alone even among this family, so alone." This is significant because throughout the story Bittering is convinced that it's Mars itself, a climate or atmosphere, which is slowly changing the people around him, which recalls the feared 'inevitable' spread of communism which extended from the end of WWII until at least the end of the Vietnam debacle. Additionally, his sense of loneliness recalls the atmosphere caused by the second Red Scare and the presence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): effectively, no-one could trust the people around them, because communists are everywhere. In "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed," Bittering cannot trust anyone around him because none of them feel the threat of intellectual and spiritual annihilation which he perceives.

The element of this story I find most intriguing is that Bittering's resistance is eventually overcome by a kind of tranquility. There are lots of words which contribute to this feeling: "He was too tired to be afraid" (138), "peace" (138), "Slow, deep, silent change" (138), "refreshing" (139), "...lazy in the heat" (140). The question which this brings up for me is: was this tranquility designed to instill horror at the character's submission, or incorporate the reader into it, effectively obliterating the need for fear of change? Personally, I was made calm as Bittering calmed, probably aided by the use of these soft, decidedly non-panicked, non-menacing words. Hopefully it was able to have the same effect in 1949.