The Martian Chronicles Characters

We admit that it's weird to call "Americans/Humans" a character, but it's hard to shake the feeling that the really important figure in this book is humanity itself. And most of the examples of hum...

Ylla and Yll K are a typical 1940s suburban couple, except for the teeny little fact that they're Martians with "yellow coin eyes" (3). Yll goes into the city to work while Ylla spends her days cle...

Williams and His Crew Picture this: you fly millions of miles in a rocket ship to an entirely different planet, and when you get there a housewife shrieks at you to keep your muddy boots off her c...

Okay, maybe this section should really be called "Character in the Taxpayer," but the thing is that Pritchard is really standing in for anyone and everyone who thinks that paying the same taxes eve...

Captain John Black, the Third Expedition, and the Martians ("The Third Expedition") So, sixteen guys are headed to Mars on a rocket ship. Sounds like the set up for a joke, doesn't it? Well, it's...

Jeff Spender Jeff Spender is like the guy in class who takes a joke a little too far, if by "joke" you mean "honoring the Martian past" and by "a little too far" you mean "killing all the humans...

Driscoll is the Johnny Appleseed of Mars, only with a motorcycle and a slight habit of fainting. He faints when he gets to Mars because the air is so low in oxygen. Then at the end of the story, wh...

Tomás Gomez Gomez carries a deadly weapon: his smile. Unlike some of the early explorers of Mars (like Biggs and Parkhill), Gomez seems like a nice guy. When he meets a Martian, Gomez doesn't rea...

Very Reverend Father Joseph Daniel Peregrine Father Peregrine is a playful priest. (And evidently an alliterative one, too.) He might start off looking like a silly joker, but we quickly learn th...

Janice Smith and Leonora Holmes Now that the menfolk have settled the planet, Mars needs women. (Although you kind of sense that Bradbury wishes it didn't.) Janice, Leonora—doesn't really matte...

Samuel Teece Samuel Teece may be racist, but he does have some good qualities. For example… Scratch that. He has no redeeming qualities. He's racist, he's mean to his wife (Clara Teece), he thr...

William Stendahl Stendahl builds an entire mansion just to kill the people who burned his library. Seriously. Now, we know that Ray Bradbury takes book burning pretty seriously, but—whew. That i...

Mr. "Lafe" LaFarge and Mrs. Anna LaFargeThe LaFarges must have the best pension plan ever, since they've retired to Mars at 55 and 60 years old (14). (Fun fact: you probably assumed that Lafe is 60...

Sam Parkhill Parkhill is a guy who would go all the way to Mars just to set up a hot dog stand. When a Martian comes to talk to him, he threatens to give him "the Disease" (22) and then "go on and...

Walter Gripp is a man on a mission: for female companionship. He can never find it, and we suspect that's because he has totally unrealistic standards for women. In fact, he's kind of a jerk. Grip...

Hathaway is the doctor and geologist from the Fourth Expedition. He decided to settle on Mars with his family—his wife (Alice), two daughters (Marguerite and Susan), and son (John)—to do "remot...

Okay, so the automated house isn't exactly a character—but it's still pretty awesome. Think about how much having one of these babies would improve your life (or at least increase your intake of...

Timothy Timothy and his family come to Mars with the pretext that they're just off for a holiday jaunt. Surprise: they're not. They're resetting, and Timothy is either in for an amazing adventure...