to continue with my martian and project hail mary parallels, one thing I love is how similar and simultaneously oppositional the two protagonist’s journeys are.
mark watney is the dogged survivalist, the man who grew potatoes on mars and repaired a rover and almost blew himself up to make water, all because he refused to let the planet mars kill him. ryland grace, on the other hand, is a man who dedicated his entire life to educating the next generation. on the surface, it seems like a case of polar opposites - individualism vs collectivism, selfishness vs selflessness, the unwilling sacrifice vs the willing martyr.
yet somehow, the above couldn’t be further from the truth.
mark is in his conundrum because of his selflessness. he chose to become an astronaut, decided to go on a mission to mars and was fully aware that there was a very real chance that somewhere, along the line, he might die. he consented to every single action that put him in that position. ryland is aboard the hail mary without his consent. he was drugged by the person he trusted most, and at no point had he ever expressed any interest in undertaking anything of this sort.
ryland, at the start, does the best he can to help rocky, but it isn’t just out of a selfless need to save someone else: it’s also out of a selfish need to save earth and, to some extent, have a chance to go back home. mark, at the start, is trying to convince himself that it is alright if he dies, that he is a man with no family save his parents and so, is the least valuable one on board. it’s understandable - prudent, even - if nasa leaves him there.
ryland is put in the position he is thanks to humanity’s seemingly selfish selflessness. there are billions to save and he’s just one man, after all, so what does it matter if we drug him and load him onto the hail mary if it means a chance to save us all? his wishes don’t matter here, only what’s best for everyone else. one man’s wish to live means nothing in the face of an entire planet’s extinction, so he better do what the situation demands.
mark, however, is up there because of humanity’s seemingly selfless selfishness. these astronauts willingly put their lives on the line to go to mars all in the pursuit of knowledge that would allow humanity to inhabit an otherwise unlivable planet. conquest, not conservation, is their driving force. and their wishes matter, sure, but if it’s not you, someone else will go up there anyways, so you better do your part when you can.
and yet, no matter what leads ryland and mark to end up in the situations that they do, what ends up driving their story is the same exact thing.
blakekathryn
2087
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
titsay
