Time and Choice in, "The Martian"

Colin Hayes

EN.387.01

Dr. Juniper Ellis

13 February 2018

The Martian: Time and Choice

            The tedious and grueling journey that Mark Watney embarks on is hard to comprehend when we reflect on how our time is spent. As regular people and not astronauts stranded in the desolate Martian landscape, we are able to choose how we spend our time and how long we want to spend it on certain things. As a community at Loyola, we have chosen to spend our time in pursuit of academia and then comes our decision on how to spend our time outside of the classroom. We have interests such as athletics or clubs that we find worthy of putting our time into. Thankfully, we are able to spend and utilize our time on different aspects of life that will make our existence happy. For Watney however this is not the case.

            Time for Watney as he measures in sols is not flexible or able to be changed at the last second so that he can do something he enjoys. Every second of every sol Watney has to measure out to ensure that he survives. His time although long and lonesome has a purpose as he writes, “I don't have a plan for surviving four years on one year of food [...] For now, I'm well fed and have a purpose: Fix the damn radio” (Weir 2). Although he does have extensive amounts of time, it cannot be wasted because it is essential that he works towards his escape and journey back to Earth. Watney says in one of his logs, “After all, I’ve got nothing but time” (Weir 40). Despite Watney saying this, it seems as if he has no time at all to us. We would interpret this isolation as time running out, but Watney’s vivacious spirit drives him on to make sure his time is spent to his advantage. The interesting aspect of Watney’s life on Mars is that as the days drag on he becomes accustomed to not having any time for something that he would enjoy. This is his life and he cannot change anything about it. I think about how we develop our daily routines and become adjusted to a certain complacency. Often I think that the way our time is spent should be changed around or adjusted, just not in the way Watney’s was completely flipped upside down.