The Martian Chronicles The Taxpayer Summary

  • Time for another quick interchapter.
  • This one focuses on an Earth Man, Pritchard, who we know as the Taxpayer. The Taxpayer is worried about impending nuclear war, and he thinks that paying taxes gives him the right to hop on the spaceship. 
  • (If this were a Ben Stiller—Robert De Niro comedy, he'd just be trying to escape his in-laws.)
  • See, the Taxpayer thinks that, because he pays the taxes that presumably have built the spaceship, he should get to go to Mars, too.
  • But, he's wrong. Instead, he gets to go to jail.