Spender Essay, Research Paper

The Martian Chronicles, written by Raymond Bradbury, is a book that discusses s what might happen if Earthmen were to try to colonize Mars. There were four expiditions by Earthmen to Mars. The first three expiditions were destroyed by martians who were jeolous or who were afraid of being colonized . The fourth expedition was different. There were no hostile martians or any martians at all. The men sent out a search and discovered that the martians had been wiped out by chicken pox, presumablyy transmmited by a previuos expedition. One man aboard the forth expedition named Jeff Spender was horified at this tradjedy. He felt that Earthmen should not colonize Mars because they already destroyed the race, they will then destroy the planet. He dreamed of saving the planet by himself, but was later killed for his beliefs.

Spender was a archeologist, so he already had a sense to preserve the past. He felt that Earhtmen have a tendency to destroy things, even though they may be unintentional. When Spender saw a whole race of people who were wiped out by a plague brought over by another race, he felt that Mars would be a much safer place if Earthmen were to never inhabit it. For example, a character named Gibbs took six empty gin bottles to a canal and dumped then in. Spender was outraged at this that he punched him right in the teeth. Spender could not understand how Gibbs was so disrespectful to Mars after learning that Earthmen killed an entire race.

Spender left for a week and no one knew where or why he had left. Whilehe was gone he thought of a plan to save Mars. Spenders plan of saving Mars was nearly impossible. He decieded the only way to save Mars was to kill the men that were already there and then kill all of the expedition that would come in the future. After killing a hand full of men he realized this was not going to work. He decided to talk to Captain Wilder who was the only man that understood why he was angry. He asked the Captain to stop Earthmen from coming or at least delay the coloniation. There is no way he could stop the ships from Earth when they find out all the martians were dead. Since Wilder was not going to help and his plan was going to fail, Spender tried to go back to killing the men. The men had him cornered and were ready to kill him. Wilder gave him thirty seconds to escape or he would shoot him. Spender did not move and Wilder shot him once in the chest.