Imagery of Suffering
Life in the settlement was not all good as sometimes they would go for days eating food made from algae which was terrible while waiting for Command to send supplies. Every once in a while, there was malfunctioning of the types of equipment. The air scrubbers failed one time and Sai fainted due to a lack of oxygen in the room. Some suffered from isolation like Phinneus who always complained about how they were living as if in a cage. The virus that had attacked all adults caused misery and helplessness among the children. The adults suffered from symptoms such as fever, and cold with Sai even experiencing a psychotic breakdown.
The imagery of life in the settlement
The narrator lets us in on how life on mars was and how different it was from life on earth. The kind of plants they grew was mostly algae which they used to make their daily food. They used battery-charged trains and automobiles called rovers. They were not allowed to make contact with the outside colonies and they had a daily routine that was followed strictly. They communicated with the outside world through Sai who was their leader. They depended on the Command to supply them with necessities to ease their stay. They had Digi-comm devices that allowed them to see how people on earth lived their life and to communicate as well. They held all their broken items using duct tape. They also used algae to make papers and they recycled everything. They had no free oxygen like on earth and that is why their air scrubbers were important. From this description, we get a glimpse of how their life was and it also spikes our curiosity of someday wanting to try it out. We also learn about the basics of their life and survival on Mars.
The imagery of the Children’s Detour
The children had stolen the rover to go out looking for the supposed meteorite that Bell had seen falling. Their little detour was captured vividly making the reader feel as if they were part of the team. “I stared at the landscape. I never got tired of looking at it. There were gently sloping sand dunes and deep canyons. Mountains, craters, and towering hills with jagged outcrops. Right now, we were driving across a plain studded with rocks” From their tour they could see the terrain of the settlement beneath them which resembled some of the things also found on earth. The tour also illustrated their encounter with the French people and how scary that was for them. The tour also highlighted the struggles with the rover losing charge and therefore getting stuck and helpless. With Vera soiling her clothes to Bell sustaining injuries the curiosity they had at first turned into regrets. The detour gave the readers an idea of how hostile their neighboring colonies were and why they could not interact with them. It also showed how bored the children were of staying in one place and seeing the same people that they had to go out to find out what was out there.
The imagery of structures in the Settlement
Bell giving us their house tour helped answer a lot of questions about their settlement on Mars. Their settlement was mostly underground built in a giant lava tube that helped to protect them from radiation, dust, and cold. “The interior walls were constructed from a space-tech gray rubber that curved gently, flowing from one room to the next like a smile. The rooms were round, almost bubble-like, for improved structural integrity.” This gives a vivid imagination of the shape of the rooms and how the interiors looked like compared to the ones on earth. It lets us know which kind of structures would be fit for life on Mars. From Bell’s house tour, we also get that they also had partitioning of rooms with each partition used for a different purpose just like on earth. There were some differences like the kind of construction materials used on earth such as cement were not available on Mars.
