Alejandro Medina

Mrs. Freitas

Class: 6B

Date 4/25/22

Risky Martian

Would you be willing to take risks on a different planet that can determine if you live or

not? Mark Watney is a bontanis that has been stranded on Mars and every single day he takes

risks. The Martian by Andy Weir, is a Science Fiction novel about a botanist named Mark

Watney being stranded on mars after a huge dust storm and has to survive on mars until someone

saves him. In the story Mark is forced to take many risks that determine his survival. Andy Weir

is trying to say that it's better to take risks than to just sit around and do nothing.

Mark takes many risks in this novel and in the beginning he makes lots of them. At first,

Mark needs to make water to survive so he brings tanks of hydrazine in the hab to make some. “I

brought the reaction chamber in, I briefly considered only bringing one tank of hydrazine in at a

time to reduce risk”(Weir #30) It's risky that Mark brought hydrazine in the hab because the hab

could potentially blow up if handled wrong. Another example of Mark taking a risk is when he

sets a fire to find a leak inside of the hab. “I can only think of one way to find it: Start a fire!”

“And yes, deliberately starting a fire in a tiny ,enclosed space is usually a terrible idea” (Weir

#161) The quote shows that Mark is aware that what he's doing is a bad idea but he still does it to

survive.

But in this novel Mark isn't the only one taking risks.

The Ares team that left a mark on Mars are also taking risks that can determine life or

death. Ares' crew is going against what NASA has told them to do and are going back for
Watney.“ If we do everything perfectly, we add 533 days of unplanned space travel where

anything can go wrong” (Weir #211) This refines the theme by showing that the crew is fully

aware that if they do anything wrong it could ruin everything and they would be killed. Now

back to Mark taking risks, Marks has to launch using a highly modified MAV to escape mars. “it

might not launch at all” “I could have screwed up all sorts of things during that process” (Weir

#337) This quote shows that Watney is aware of all the dangers but he still launches to escape

and for a chance of survival. Now that Water is in space, his life is now in the hands of his crew

mates.

The Ares team are now on a mission to retrieve marks from space and they take many

risks.

Vogel makes a bomb to slow down.“Vogel kows how to make a bomb. In facts, much of his

training was to avoid making them by mistake” (Weird #358) It shows that Vogel is not supposed

to be making bombs but in this stituation he was basicsally forced to make one just for the

chance to save his crewmate.