One Man's Tragedy Bringing People Together

The Martian portrays how one man’s isolation on Mars can bring together communities on Earth. While Mark Watney feels alone and completely detached from Earth, NASA has already discovered that he is alive via satellites. Before enabling communication, Watney already has a team of people banding together to save his life. Within NASA, people are temporarily halting their job requirements in order to come up with a plan. Venkat tasks Mindy Park with tracking Watney on the satellites and reporting his progress. At one point, she complains that she is overqualified to be a “peeping Tom.” However, she ultimately recognizes the importance of her job and adjusts her sleep schedule to Watney’s.

The people at NASA work extreme overtime hours to complete projects and meet the precise deadlines. When they fail to send the food supply, they become dejected and have trouble finding another solution until they get a call from China’s Space Agency. Watney’s plight has become an international concern when Guo Ming and his team consider helping NASA by providing their booster. The crisis has brought two rival countries together through science because Ming acknowledges that “if this becomes a negotiation by diplomats, it will never be resolved. We need to keep this among scientists. Space agency to space agency” (195). Often times, the scientists refer to themselves as a group; they say “we” because it is a group effort to bring Mark back. His situation has united scientists of competing countries and even inspired other scientists to take time to rationalize other solutions.

Rich Purnell, in astrodynamics, hardly ever needed to work overtime, yet he joined the effort and came up with the life-saving maneuver. His alternative also included Watney’s crew, which permitted them to enter the effort too. Suddenly, more and more people are being connected because of the “basic instinct to help each other” (369). With CNN devoting a timeslot for the Mark Watney Segment more people became invested in his predicament until “pretty much everyone in the world feels the same way:” helpless during the maneuver (362). People wanted to help so much that they sacrificed their time, their projects, and even their lives to save one man’s life. However, it was all worth it, for once they succeeded the celebration exploded “all over the world, in parks, bars, civic centers, living rooms, classrooms, and offices” (366). Most especially “the couple in Chicago clutched each other in sheer relief” as their son “muted [his] mic and screamed like a little girl” elatedly (367). Indeed, all those who cared “massively outnumbered…the assholes who just don’t care” (369).