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Mark Watney's Time On Mars Summary

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The main character, Mark Watney, is the lowest ranking member aboard the Ares 3 mission crew. Mark is both a botanist and a mechanical engineer and puts his skills to work quite often throughout his time on Mars. When Mark and his crew were in the process of evacuating Mars, Mark was hit by debris and was presumed dead and left on Mars. Mark makes the best of his time on Mars with documenting his days with a log. In his logs he uses a lot of sarcasm and humor. Mark expresses his dislike with crude language especially with disco music as it is the only music that is with him. Mark is a headstrong stubborn character that could be considered a risk taker. This is especially evident in when taking apart equipment against the advice of NASA such …show more content…

They are labelled as sols and count up since Mark has landed on Mars. The novel is mostly set up from the perspective of Mark in the past tense as he is writing about his day with the events happening earlier in the day for example when talking about a conversation “I told NASA what I did. Our (paraphrased) conversation was: Me: “I took it apart, found the problem, and fixed it.” NASA: “Dick.”. The book also has a third person point of view put into play when the perspective changes to look at events happening on earth this is evident when NASA is worried about Mark’s mental health “He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.” the switching of the perspectives gives the novel more of a modern feel to it. The overall tone of the Martian is humorous and sarcastic and can be seen by both NASA and Mark in multiple parts of the novel. At NASA discussing Mark’s progress a worker said “'I remember when you were shy.'” to which was followed up with “'I'm space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job.”. Mark is also very sarcastic and humorous especially when talking about various objects such as duct tape “Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”. The mood of the story is pretty suspenseful as many things go wrong in trying to rescue Mark, and Mark’s expeditions across Mars. Despite all the bad things happening it is miraculous that Mark even keeps his positive outlook on life on Mars as he said “I guess you could call it a "failure", but I prefer the term "learning experience".” which is very surprising considering everything he has been

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