The Visitor Themes

Ray Bradbury’s “The Visitor” is above all an allegory about the corrosive nature of greed. In the story, men who have contracted “blood rust”—a contagious and incurable terminal disease—have been sent to live out their final months on Mars. When the arrival of Leonard Mark, the titular visitor, offers an escape from the desolate isolation of their quarantine, every man grows eager to keep this new “treasure” for himself—yet in their violent selfishness, they…

Saul Williams’s first thought upon waking up to another quiet Martian morning is “how far away” the Earth is. Well before Leonard Mark’s arrival, Bradbury establishes the incredible sense of isolation that Saul—and all the Martian exiles—must feel, having been torn from the familiarity not simply of their individual homes, but of their entire home planet. By emphasizing the men’s intense longing for Earth and desperate wish for meaningful social interaction, Bradbury argues…