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Michael Smith Stereotypes

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The late 1950s and early 1960s fostered an era of extreme social turmoil. The events of the Cold War combined with the emergence of counterculture movements led the United States in a direction that would permanently change American society. The constant threat of nuclear bombardment provided a platform to criticize traditional modes of authority, while lacking ideals of women’s rights and religious tolerance built upon that platform. Robert Heinlein, a science fiction writer, was one of many in the era finding the current state of society to be inadequate. In Stranger in a Strange Land, written in 1961, Heinlein’s use of stereotyped characters functions to provide Heinlein with an outlet of criticism for late 1950s and early 1960s American …show more content…

His upbringing and knowledge of the Martian language provides him with unique powers such as telepathy and levitation. Once brought to Earth, Smith quickly learns the tenets of American culture, and his character development begins to draw parallels to that of Jesus Christ’s. Smith eventually aims to help humans, and rid the world of “pain and sickness and hunger and fighting” (357). This is congruent to John’s description of Jesus as the one who “takes away the sin of the world” (New International Version, John 1.29). Smith additionally holds a group of followers known as the “Ninth Circle” who follow him around and learn from his teachings, reflective of Jesus’s disciples (388). Both Smith and Jesus endure the same symbolic death where they are both willingly persecuted for the movement that they led. Smith’s death comes as he willingly goes “to meet” an angry mob plotting to murder him, and preaches his teachings as he is being murdered (483). Jesus’s death starts with his arrest, where he willingly allows Judas to arrange his arrest, telling Judas to “do what [he] came for” and discourages his disciples from intervening with the arrest (Matt. 26.50). Heinlein chooses to portray Smith’s story as a modern retelling of the story of Jesus to expose the hypocrisies in religion, using Christianity as the example. Those who persecuted Jesus are those who are considered nonbelievers, and will be punished in the afterlife as they “do not know God and do not obey the gospel” (2 Thess. 1.8). The Bible condemns those who questioned Jesus’s legitimacy as the son of God as people who are inherently bad, and therefore deserve to go to hell in the afterlife. The argument is made that after witnessing the miracles of Jesus, one should immediately have faith that he is the son of God. In the death of Smith, Heinlein shows Fosterites, members of a sect of Christianity, witness miracles performed by

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