We will discuss Andy Weir’s The Martian at our meeting on Wednesday, June 1st at 4:15p.m. in the GAHS library. Please post questions, comments, concerns, criticism, and the like on this blog prior to, during, or after our meeting (before June 3rd if you want extra/replacement credit). All questions and responses should indicate an active reading of the text and function to move the conversation forward. (Note: surface-level or obvious questions and responses will not count as participation for grade replacement.)
Those of you unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts may participate in the discussion below by posting a discussion question and offering a detailed response, or by responding to two questions already posted. The note above applies here as well, so heed it!
If Mark Watney hadn’t thought about growing and planting his own potatoes in his “research facility” on Mars and becoming the first farmer on Mars, do you think Watney would have survived with limited source of food or do you think he would have continued to fight and be hopeful with his positive attitude and humor?
Do you believe that the authors choice of frequent “vulgar language” affected the stylistic manner of the book? How? Why?
Discussion Question: How does Andy Weir’s novel, The Martian, compare and contrast with the movie directed by Ridley Scott?
When any major motion picture is derived from a novel, many details are often adjusted for financial and entertainment needs. Sets are often bound to the budget, facts and dialogue are cut to please audience members, and chapters are cut for the purpose of time. The thing that sets the Martian apart from many of these movies is Mark’s survival. The omitted elements could have meant the difference between life and death for Mark Watney.
Mark’s Martian-grown potatoes are one of the main factors that his life depended on during his trial on Mars. However, the movie only shows a portion of the land that Mark used to grow his potatoes. In the novel, Mark uses any extra space he can find in the Hab, including the “…five unused bunks.”, the Hab’s “…three lab tables…”, and the “…emergency pop-tent.” in both Martian rovers as discussed in sol 25. That’s a lot of room, yielding many more potatoes than the land the movie presented. The movie only depicts the Hab as Mark’s gardening space, but in the novel he claims that the amount of calories that the potatoes in the Hab produced was not nearly enough for his survival on Mars. Furthermore, the movie only briefly shows the amount of back-breaking work he put into creating his potato farm. Clearly the movie’s depiction of Mark’s botany power and hard work does not do him justice.
Another major component that the movie eliminated was the explanation of Mark’s inventions and processes. There was a lot of chemistry and physics that went into his survival on Mars, and many of these were excluded and adjusted in the film due to the production company’s target audience. While Andy Weir is writing to the science-fiction community, Scott Free Productions aims to serve more drama and entertainment to their audience. Many of those who find the adventures of space captivating, ironically do not appreciate the science behind the screen and watch movies like the Martian solely for entertainment. Statements like “That makes the oxygen turn to liquid, but leaves the nitrogen…”, as explained on sol 38, may put many action enthusiasts to sleep and drive the thrill away from the movie. This puts pressure on the production company to leave out many of Mark’s intricate thought processes and discoveries.
Finally, the movie leaves out one of the best and most admiral parts of the novel: Mark independently prepares the rover then blindly navigates himself through a deathly sand storm. The movie fails to inform their audience that Mark lost communication with NASA before his trip to the MAV. This is the most adventurous and triumphant part of the novel, and it encompasses the magnitude of his achievement on Mars. Dozens of sols are removed from the movie during this part of his journey, and with that, part of his glory is lost. Preparing “to survive away from the Hab for a hundred sols” and modifying a rover for “a 3200-kilometer over-land drive” is no easy job with help from NASA, but doing it by yourself while being isolated on a barren planet is a whole different story.
Though the movie does a fantastic job of relaying most of the information from the novel and depicting the trail of Mark Watney, they also left out some major details. These details were pivotal to Mark’s survival and the accomplishments that he made, but it is in that three hundred sixty-nine pages packed with detail are difficult to fit into one movie.
On pages 62 and 63, Venkat suggests the idea that Ares 4 be sent into space in order to rescue Mark Watney from Mars. With this, millions of dollars would be spent to attempt to save 1 person’s life. Is it worth it? Should NASA sacrifice Mark Watney in order to avoid funding a milti-million dollar mission to space to save only one person?
I think that NASA’s decision to send Ares 4 up into space to save Mark Watney, which would have costs millions of dollars just to save one person was worth it. At the end of the book and movie, once Watney has returned back to Earth and home, he has lived to tell the people of his adventure. He taught the people in a classroom setting of his adventure. If he wouldnt have been saved, he wouldnt be alive to tell his story. He would have been known as the person who was stranded on Mars and is still stranded on Mars, but dead, but no one would have been able to learn and hear about it without the first hand experience of Mark Watney himself. So the plan of Ares 4 to be sent into space to retrieve Watney was a good enough sacrifice only so he could teach and tell the people on Earth how he survived and what other people would need to do if they ever got stranded on Mars.
The writing style of Andy Weir in “The Martian” is almost entirely composed of Log entries from Mark Watney on Mars. Besides that literal purpose of these logs, being that without them there would be no content, to what extent does Weir make it seem like Watney is dependent on these Log entries as a source of companionship and why is this important to his survival? And to follow up, why do you think Weir chose to write “The Martian” in a series of log entries from the first person point-of-view of Mark Watney?
Wier’s decision to use Mark Watney’s log entries in order to establish a personal connection between Watney and the audience. Although NASA and the people back on Earth did not know the details of Mark’s situation, the reader did because of Mark Watney’s log entries. Watney offers explicit details of his situation in these log entries, and we as the audience feel more connected to Watney than NASA ever did, which gives the reader a feeling of importance, especially before communication between NASA and Mark Watney was established. Weir gives his audience an inside scoop into Watney’s adventure to give the audience the information that NASA was searching for.
It goes without saying that Mark’s quick thinking saved his life multiple times, but in a way his humor and positive outlook did as well. How valuable is a positive attitude for someone in Mark’s situation to have?
Mark’s humor is very prevalent throughout the entire novel. For example, on page 129, we see a written conversation between Watney and Venkat Kapoor in which Watney showcases his humor to the world. Not only is he comical throughout his experience on Mars, but he has a remarkably positive attitude. These character traits that Mark has are very beneficial to his situation because despite his struggles, the explosion, the inability (at first) to communicate with anyone, the antenna impaling his side, and more, he took advantage of his surroundings, and used his positive attitude and humor to make the best of his unfortunate situation of being stranded on Mars. In the end, his character helped his solve every hurdle he encountered, leading to his eventual rescue by Hermes.
For Mark, he had no one to talk to or communicate with for a year and a half (other than his logs) but that didnt stop him. He kept the faith that he would get home. Though he had a few accidents and freaked out a couple of times in the book, he continued to have a positive outlook. That was his survival method.He made light of the insane situation he was in by cracking jokes. His sense of humor very much so kept him alive. It kept him as sane as a man stuck on Mars with no way to contact anyone could be. It was one of his most valuable weapons to his survival.
Staying positive was keeping Mark alive just about as mush as the food he was growing was. As seen from the prison video watched in English, it is very easy to go crazy when you are alone for so along. Then factoring in the fact that he was stuck in space is even worse. Keeping a positive outlook on life and a sense of humor keeps him from going crazy and doing something stupid that could possibly kill him. So in a sense staying positive helped him stay alive.
His positive attitude provides hope in his situation. Mark’s attitude gives him a sense of security, meaning his positive outlook give him faith that the situation will get better and he will be able to make it home to his family. Without his humor and positive outlook, I believe it is fair to say that he could have given up or lose his confidence;thus, he would have never been able to survive. Staying positive helped him survive and remain hopeful.
Mark had to keep a positive attitude in order to remain calm and willing to stay alive. His positive attitude and humor helped in stay faithful in the idea that there was a chance for him to come home alive. Those people who always think negatively and believe something bad will happen to them, it always ends up happening. That;s why its necessary for people to encourage and stay positive. Mark was in survival mode, so he would do anything just stay alive and maintaining positive is the easiest thing to do. Since he was really his only source of friendship and communication for almost a year and a half, other than the little communication through his logs, he had to be his own support system and that’s why he had a positive attitude. Remaining positive helped him stay hopeful that he would return home at some point.
Do you think the Chinese space organization made the right decision and what do you think the relationship between the NASA and this organization would be like in the future?
“He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.”
(Page 64)
Comparing NASA’s reaction to Mark Watney’s survival to Mark’s personal reaction to living, how has his personality and perspective on life influenced his survival and attitude during the experience on Mars?
Well, I think that Mark’s look on the whole situation is a complete 180 from the way that we would look at the problem. Most people, after finding out that they are the only human on mars, would soon accept the fact that they’re probably going to die or just go completely insane. Mark, however, brings a positive outlook on the whole situation. A point where I think this helped contribute to his survival on Mars is during the log entry on SOL 114 (page 130) where he talks about the email he receives from the University of Chicago. His sense of humor I think helps him deal with the larger task of surviving by lifting the stress of the whole situation just a little bit.
Mark had no choice but to think about other things than being stuck on space. He had to stay positive or go mad. Most people wouldn’t have taken the approach that Mark did and in the end probably wouldn’t had survived. Mark stayed positive and didn’t focus on his problems but he tried to humor himself by talking about things like Aquaman as seen in his logs.