Revenge and Empathy Theme Analysis

Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Other Foot” takes place on Mars, twenty years after all black people have fled the racism and cruelty of Earth to colonize the Red Planet. The impending arrival of a white man — the first white man to visit Mars since the black people colonized the planet — dredges up the Martians’ deep-rooted feelings of bitterness towards a world that denied their humanity. Bradbury’s story highlights the natural human impulse toward revenge while also presenting vengeance as both unproductive and unsatisfying. Because revenge simply perpetuates animosity and pain, “The Other Foot” ultimately suggests that true emotional healing can only happen when alleged enemies learn to see one another with empathy and understanding.

Bradbury’s story centers primarily on Willie Johnson, a Martian who immediately races home to get his guns upon hearing of the white man’s arrival. Though he doesn’t know who the white man is or what he wants, Willie’s first impulse is toward violence. What’s more, he convinces the entire town to bring guns and ropes to greet the visitor. When Hattie, Willie’s wife, urges her husband to stop and think for a moment, Willie responds by pointing out that he has stewed on racial relations for the past twenty years. “I was sixteen when I left Earth, and I was glad to leave,” he says. “There wasn’t anything there for me or you or anybody like us.” With no sense of closure after leaving Earth, Willie’s pain and spite has been bottled up for two decades and the white man’s arrival triggers its release.

Bradbury presents Willie’s desire for revenge as an understandable human impulse, but complicates matters by revealing how such feelings only perpetuate pain and strife for all involved. Getting increasingly worked up about the white man’s arrival on Mars, Willie tells his wife, “the shoe’s on the other foot now. We’ll see who gets laws passed against him, who gets lynched, who rides the back of streetcars, who gets segregated in shows.” Willie’s plan for revenge means reinstating Jim Crow laws (the United States’ strict racial segregation policies that were abolished in the 1950s), but altering them so that they exclude white, rather than black, people. Such a desire clearly eats away at Willie, however, whose face looks “stern and heavy and folded in upon the gnawing bitterness” as he scours his attic for guns. When Willie later proudly admits to forming a bloodthirsty mob to greet the white man, the mayor admonishes Willie that he is doing the “same thing” he always hated, and as such is “no better than some of those white men” he yells about. The mayor highlights how Willie isn’t solving prejudice by turning his ire on white people; rather, he’s perpetuating the same problems and attitudes that led to misery for people like him on Earth.

Instead of revenge, the story suggests that to combat vengeful impulses people must view others with empathy. During Willie’s angry rant prior to the white man’s arrival, Hattie tells her husband that he doesn’t “sound human.” In his rage, Willie has become cold, heartless, and unempathetic toward people who are different from him; his desire for vengeance has stripped him of man’s more noble qualities. However, after actually meeting the white man and internalizing Earth’s near-complete destruction, Willie realizes that those who oppressed him have finally experienced genuine horror themselves—and, as such, must better grasp the cruelty and horror to which they subjected people who look like Willie. Indeed, Willie’s vengeful impulses melt away once he is able to empathize with the white man over their shared experiences. Willie’s ultimate embrace of the visitor reflects the story’s belief that shared trauma can create understanding, and that understanding is the only path toward peace.