Can we ever truly know another?

I think last class’ discussion was by far one of our best. It was fascinating to juxtapose Speaker For The Dead with The Martian Chronicles while looking at alien-human relations through Schmitt’s friend-enemy dichotomy. When it comes to The Martian Chronicles everyone has valid points and could be potentially correct since Bradbury makes his stories so ambiguous.

I would agree with PTJ’s analysis that Bradbury does not have too high an opinion of the political, that much is evident in his story “Usher II.” In The Martian Chronicles, humans and Martians have largely been deprived of the opportunity to communicate. The friend-enemy distinction largely did not seem to develop either – although this assertion could be argued the other way. Humans did not in the beginning see the Martians as something "in a specially intense way, existentially…different and alien,” from themselves (Schmitt, p. 27). In the expeditions in the beginning the Martians are either unperturbed by the human’s arrival or simulating a typical 1920s Iowa town.

On the other hand, the friend-enemy distinction could have been set off from the Martians’ perspective. In the first expedition, the jealous Martian husband kills the astronauts. Does he thus perceive the humans as a threat or is he merely enraged with jealousy? Why do the Martians orchestrate the killing of the full crew of astronauts on the third expedition? Is this an attack based on the friend-enemy distinction? An attempt at survival? The ambiguity in Bradbury’s chronicles lies in the intent of both species – the lack of communication allows Bradbury to leave the book open to endless interpretation.

A class member brought up one particularly fascinating understanding of the book. He said that the humans and we as readers have never seen the Martians and Martian society as it truly existed. Throughout the entire book the Martian society was affected and altered by the presence of the humans. The Martians’ telepathic receptivity allowed us to project our ideas, culture and way of life onto them and change them. If we never saw them for what they really were how could we develop the friend-enemy distinction? How could we truly communicate with them?

What is Bradbury really saying here on a psychological level – that we can never really see others as they truly exist because we project onto them our ideas of what they are and what they should be? On an existential level, can we ever really know another?

Perhaps “The Night Meeting” is an acceptance of this truth - that we cannot coexist without changing the other, and letting ourselves be changed, to be more in line with how we view one another. Does that mean we can coexist? Or are the changes so drastic that one loses his or her identity, essentially self, to the other? I think we can coexist but then again I am no Schmittian who does not believe in compromise. I mean, how do married couples get along?