The Martian Chronicles

Teasdale’s poem, recited in full in the story, depicts a world operating after war has wiped out humankind, and Bradbury’s story acts as a thematic echo in its quiet observation of the indifferent functioning of the automated house. But it is the deep anti-war sentiment with which the poem was written which resonates through Bradbury’s depiction of the day the final human construction crumbled, utilizing the silence which surrounds the operating of the house to stand for the billions of human voices which have been recently hushed.

Bradbury invokes his talent for quaint nostalgia to the imbue the early actions of the house with the warm remembrance of bustling breakfasts and busy mornings, but as in “The Musicians,” he employs it to underscore a darker, pessimistic vision. Nowhere else is this double-vision better represented than the haunting image of a suburban family’s silhouettes blasted onto the side of their home by a nuclear explosion. These shapes, cast against the indifferent flank of the house, are the last vestige of human lives on Earth.

The appearance of the family dog continues a long tradition of using animals in art to depict the suffering of innocents in war. The automated functioning of the house, meant to provide safety and comfort for its occupants, is cruelly inefficient in tending to the dog’s misery. When the dog dies, the house’s functioning continues, unable to recognize that there will be no return, only entropy, only breakdown. This indifference echoes that of Teasdale’s poem in which the vastness of nature is unable to lament the loss of something so inconsequential as humankind. It is only after its own destruction, when all that remains of the house is a single interior wall, does the house issue a damning indictment to the mechanized indifference for which it stands. The date the house repeats over and over, August 5th, is the date on which the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945—initiating a new form of mechanized warfare, and ostensibly starting the slide toward worldwide nuclear devastation.

The house in Allendale is hermetically sealed against the environment, disconnected from the ruined culture around it, and finally faces ruination alone. In a stark contrast to contrast to the robots living out their blissful existences on Mars at the end of “The Long Years,” the house on Earth is destroyed despite its valiant efforts to save itself. This implies that human achievement cannot exist on Earth anymore, but it can still endure on Mars—an idea which extends into the final story of the collection.