Substantive: Manifest Destiny

While I read through Stephenson, I'm making sure I'm remembering the scenes and themes that we picked up from The Martian Chronicles identified from last class. It might just be my own focus, but more and more again I see a salient theme of projection running through both Bradbury's and Stephenson's works. One of the overarching themes I see in Manifest Destiny is the realization of this driving force through different ages of American history. From the religiously motivated Puritans, to the politically motivated politicians leading up to the Civil War, each extends their own reason onto the land, and why it fulfill their own needs. I feel as though this attitude toward the land, the implication that it is maleable and free to be molded, is a frightening stance, and one of intense near-sightedness.

One prominent passage which comes to mind is when Stephenson recounts how individuals cared not for the Native Americans which inhabited the land, since they saw them as nomads, and essentially "wasting the land". In essence, these individuals are projecting their own thoughts and needs onto the territory which they wish to be theirs. The same theme runs through the early Puritan proclamation of America as a "new Israel" - once again, individuals (and in this case, a group) is projecting their desires and practices onto the land, morphing with time to extend more and more past the original intended boundaries of their religious country. In Bradbury's work, it's subtly implied that humans are projecting their own desires into Mars - there isn't a dedicated political motivation to the "conquest" as it is outlined in Manifest Destiny, but there is certainly an undeniable aspect to the discourse of humans in the book.

One huge theme in Stephenson is race relations too, specifically between the Native Americans, black slaves, and the white population. Bradbury seems to address this in a very different manner than Stephenson's expose of American history outlines. The Martian Chronicles includes a single chapter seemingly dedicated to this question - that space travel essentially gives the black community in this small town an escape. It's interesting to note that Stephenson seems to say the exact opposite - that, at least in the case of America, founding new lands leads to increased racial oppression, not freedom from it.