Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed
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Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed
byRay Bradbury
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Dark They Were, and Golden-EyedQuotes
The wind blew as if to flake away their identities. At any moment the Martian air might draw his soul from him, as marrow comes from a white bone. He felt submerged in a chemical that could dissolve his intellect and burn away his past.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering
Related Symbols:Wind and Mist
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:284
Explanation and Analysis:
Earth people left to the strangeness of Mars, the cinnamon dusts and wine airs, to be baked like gingerbread shapes in Martian summers, put into harvested storage by Martian winters. What would happen to him, the others? This was the moment Mars had waited for. Now it would eat them.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering
Related Symbols:Wind and Mist
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:287
He glanced up from the garden to the Martian mountains. He thought of the proud old Martian names that had once been on those peaks. Earthmen, dropping from the sky, had gazed upon hills, rivers, Martian seats left nameless in spite of names. Once Martians had built cities, named cities; climbed mountains, named mountains; sailed seas, named seas. Mountains melted, seas drained, cities tumbled. In spite of this, the Earthmen had felt a silent guilt at putting new names to these ancient hills and valleys.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:287
The Earthmen had changed names. Now there were Hormel Valleys, Roosevelt Seas, Ford Hills, Vanderbilt Plateaus, Rockefeller Rivers, on Mars. It wasn’t right. The American settlers had shown wisdom, using old Indian prairie names: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Ohio, Utah, Milwaukee, Waukegan, Osseo. The old names, the old meanings.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:287
You know they have! Onions but not onions, carrots but not carrots. Taste: the same but different. Smell: not like it used to be.” He felt his heart pounding, and he was afraid. He dug his fingers into the earth. “Cora, what’s happening? What is it? We’ve got to get away from this.” He ran across the garden. Each tree felt his touch. “The roses. The roses. They’re turning green!”
Related Characters:Harry Bittering (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:288
“If we stay here, we’ll all change. The air. Don’t you smell it? Something in the air. A Martian virus, maybe; some seed, or a pollen.”
Related Characters:Harry Bittering (speaker)
Related Symbols:Wind and Mist
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:289
Lying abed, Mr. Bittering felt his bones shifted, shaped, melted like gold. His wife, lying beside him, was dark from many sunny afternoons. Dark she was, and golden-eyed, burnt almost black by the sun, sleeping, and the children metallic in their beds, and the wind roaring forlorn and changing through the old peach trees, the violet grass, shaking out green rose petals.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering, Cora Bittering
Related Symbols:Gold, Wind and Mist
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:291
“Cora, how long have your eyes been yellow?” She was bewildered. “Always, I guess.” “They didn’t change from brown in the last three months?” She bit her lips. “No. Why do you ask?” “Never mind.”
Related Characters:Harry Bittering (speaker), Cora Bittering (speaker)
Related Symbols:Gold
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:292
They leaped into the canal water, and he let himself sink down and down to the bottom like a golden statue and lie there in green silence. All was water-quiet and deep, all was peace. He felt the steady, slow current drift him easily.
If I lie here long enough, he thought, the water will work and eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. Just my skeleton left. And then the water can build on that skeleton—green things, deep water things, red things, yellow things. Change. Change. Slow, deep, silent change. And isn’t that what it is up there?
Related Characters:Harry Bittering (speaker)
Related Symbols:Gold
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:293
Looking at the small white cottage for a long moment, he was filled with a desire to rush to it, touch it, say good-bye to it, for he felt as if he were going away on a long journey, leaving some thing to which he could never quite return, never understand again.
Related Characters:Harry Bittering
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:295
“ Lots to be done, Lieutenant.” His voice droned on and quietly on as the sun sank behind the blue hills. “ New settlements. Mining sites, minerals to be looked for. Bacteriological specimens taken. The work, all the work. And the old records were lost. We’ll have a job of remapping to do, renaming the mountains and rivers and such. Calls for a little imagination.
“What do you think of naming those mountains the Lincoln Mountains, this canal the Washington Canal, those hills—we can name those hills for you, Lieutenant. Diplomacy. And you, for a favor, might name a town for me. Polishing the apple. And why not make this the Einstein Valley, and farther over . . . are you listening, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant snapped his gaze from the blue color and the quiet mist of the hills far beyond the town.
Related Characters:The Captain (speaker), The Lieutenant
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:298
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