84 pages • 2 hours read
Ray BradburyThe Illustrated Man
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Story 13
Story 13 Summary: “The Concrete Mixer”
On Mars, Ettil Vyre is guilted by witches, his wife, and his father-in-law for not joining the Martian invasion of Earth. Ettil is more interested in reading than joining a war he does not think the Martians can win. A military detail arrests him.
In his cell, Ettil is interrogated about his possession of illegal Earth science fiction books. He is convinced the Martians will lose because they lack such effective propaganda; in these Earth stories, Earthmen always wins, while Martians “never wrote stories of such a fantastic nature” (188). Ettil is convinced this gives the Earthmen a critical edge in morale. When he is forced to join the army or burn, Ettil chooses burning but changes his mind at the last minute when he sees his son looking at him “like some dying animal, a wordless animal seeking rescue” (189).
On Earth, the Martians expect a battle, but when they land in Green Town, California, the president of the United American Producers, William Sommers, welcomes them instead. He claims that Earth has left behind war—in fact, they welcome their Martian overlords. Beauty queens file by, and a band plays. The Martians are suspicious, but the Earthmen seem content with just giving them branded products. An excess of unhealthy Earth food makes them sick.
At a beauty shop, Earth women try to seduce the Martian men; only Ettil seems terrified. At a park, a woman approaches and flirts with him; when Ettil is unreceptive, she responds “You know what you talk like, mister? […] A Communist! Yes, sir, that’s the kinda talk nobody stands for, by gosh” (199). An old woman tries to convert Ettil to an evangelical brand of Christianity as he writes his wife.
In the letter, he describes how the American worship of deadly consumer objects that kill them, like cars, will soon kill the Martians: “Nothing of us will survive. We will be killed not by the gun but by the glad-hand. We will be destroyed not by the rocket but by the automobile…” (202).
A car pulls up; R.R. Van Plank, a movie producer, invites Ettil inside. He wants to make a movie called Invasion of Earth by Mars but plans to completely misrepresent Martian culture. When Ettil tries to correct him, Plank does not care; he’s out to make money. Ettil asks him what the Rs in Plank’s name stand for; Plank tells him “Richard Robert.” Laughing, Ettil agrees to be a technical director on the film: “Shake hands, Rick,” he says. “I’ve wanted to meet you. You’re the man who’ll conquer Mars, with cocktail shakers and foot arches and poker chips and riding crops and leather boots and checkered caps and rum collinses” (207).
Ettil imagines a future where American consumer goods destroy Martian culture. As he walks down the avenue, he realizes he will be struck by a car full of screaming teenagers. Before it hits, he muses that it sounds like a concrete mixer.
Story 13 Analysis
The most overtly satirical story in The Illustrated Man, “The Concrete Mixer” delves into themes of sci-fi literary convention, the power of propaganda, and cultural imperialism. It is the only story in the collection to feature an alien as the protagonist. Bradbury uses Ettil’s alien voice to peer in on the queerness of American capitalist culture from an outsider’s point of view.
Ettil is a Martian obsessed with Earth’s sci-fi literature. Aware of the power of fiction from his own expansive library, he is confident that Mars could never beat it in battle since it simply lacks the imagination. The Martians, of course, lack awareness of this disadvantage; they’d censored and outlawed literature of all kinds years before.
When Ettil arrives at Earth with the rest of the invasion force, his expectations—and those of the readers—are turned on their head. It turns out that Earth does not want to fight the Martians: It wants to seduce and indoctrinate them, all with the aim of turning a profit. Bradbury humorously inverts typical invasion narratives. The Martians are “poisoned” by American junk food and lured in by the attractive but dangerous “sea creatures” of beautiful women in a hair salon (195-97).
Ettil meets R.R. Plank, a kind of personification of the American capitalist, who is wholly willing to throw Earth at Mars’s feet to earn a dollar. Plank’s eagerness to distort Martian culture in his movie reflects the media’s insensitivity to cultural truth in favor of glitz and glamor; this is likely a nod to the insensitive portrayal of Native American culture in westerns in the 1950s. Ettil laughs at Plank’s full name, “Richard Robert Plank,” because of his familiarity with science fiction convention. “Rick” is often the name given to the space commandos who save Earth in pulp magazines—as he’d said earlier, “Each invasion is thwarted by a young man, usually lean, usually Irish, usually alone, named Mick or Rick, or Jick or Bannon” (188-89). This Rick is exactly the opposite.
Ettil tells his wife that exposure to Earth’s culture will throw Martians into a giant concrete mixer, implying that any rough edges or strange, unique details will be sanded down, by rough tumbling, to mediocrity. He thinks of the mixer again just before he dies, reminded of it by the rattle of a car, the iconic American consumer good of the 1950s.
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