The final two chapters of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" are often thought to be the most important.
In Ray Bradbury's anthology of short stories, The Martian Chronicles, critics often believe that the last two stories in the anthology are the most important. In the story “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Bradbury depicts how the lifestyles of humans on Earth at the time will lead to the final holocaust. The lifestyle of the McClellans was a lifestyle of robotic routine and thoughtless monotony. The robotic house would make the same breakfast every morning, clean the same house the same time every day, and was on a set schedule, where the only time it would stop would be to prevent intruders from entering the house or intruders into the computer. These actions performed by the computer causes the McClellans to not have to think about or do anything, and therefore making them useless as a result of not having them exercise the skills required to have a peaceful life. The computer took the burden of harnessing those skills. The “god” the house worshipped was the McClellans. All of the rituals performed by the house were to please the McClellan family, and once the family died, the house still carried on its rituals as if the gods have left them.
In Bradbury's short story “The Million-Year Picnic” the survivors from the nuclear holocaust plan to set up their own colony on Mars and recreate a peaceful society of their own. This plan for their own peaceful society is one that is highly unlikely. The reason for this is that the more the population grows, the more variety of people and ideas that will spread. Like the political parties from Revolutionary America, the larger they grew, the more ideas spread, and split up into the many political parties of today. Similarly, the more people produced, the more ideas will arise, and arguments are impossible to avoid. Human nature will not allow this dream of a utopia to ever come true. Even if they are aiming for a peaceful society, not a perfect world, the arguments between people will amplify and become much larger than they are and eventually split up the people on Mars. This goal for a new, peaceful society on Mars is one that will most likely not happen as a result of growing numbers dividing up into different groups.
