125 pages • 4 hours read
Ray BradburyThe Martian Chronicles
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1950A 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.
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
“August 1999: The Summer Night”
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“August 1999: The Summer Night” Summary
The night before the arrival of the Second Expedition of humans from Earth, Martian consciousnesses are unsettled by an onslaught of human songs, poems, and nursery rhymes. A singer finds her performance interrupted after she sings lines from the Lord Byron poem “She Walks in Beauty,” alarming the other Martians, who flee to their homes while similar occurrences happen “all around the nervous towns of Mars” (19). Children run in the street, singing the morose final lines of “Old Mother Hubbard,” though they do not understand the language. Throughout the night, women awake, screaming, after their dreams assure them that “‘Something terrible will happen in the morning” (20). As morning breaks, a night watchman begins to sing.
“August 1999: The Summer Night” Analysis
While “Ylla” suggests that only one Martian woman experiences prophetic dreams of the coming humans, this story depicts the human influence as widening across Mars, suggesting that even the brief first contact between humans and Martians has caused an infection to spread. Now, only six months later, all the women and children of Mars appear to have developed a sensitivity to human proximity. Feeding though the channels of natural Martian telepathy, the incoming human consciousnesses prove too oppressive and cause Martian pastimes to disintegrate, fundamentally shifting their culture, and leading to the prophetic conclusion that the humans are not a positive addition to Mars but rather “something terrible” (20).
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