Mark Watney's The Martian

The story the Martian is an interesting story to read. It is about a man’s journey to Mars, his adventures and his struggles. His journey to Mars went from being a great opportunity to being a devastating turn of events that led to Mark Watney being stranded on Mars for approximately 550 sols(days). During the time that as spent on Mars, Mark had a lot of ups and downs which he learned from. He had a lot of problems and concerns to consider.

“If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. So yeah. I’m fucked.”

His first problem after being left on the unbreathable

While on Mars for the long period of time, he used his time wisely to work on solutions to extend his life, his no quit attitude and state of mind was main reason he was able to survive that long on Mars. Despite being left on Mars by his crew mates, he didn’t blame them for the misunderstanding adding the fact that they thought he was dead because his communication antenna was ruptured and penetrated his space suit and his abdomen which knocked him unconscious. This tells you the type of person Mark Watney is, even though the crew felt guilty for leaving him stranded on Mars, he refused to hold a grudge. He believes in the people around him and knew there was a plan in play for him to get

Readers are able to make connections with Mark and relive a similar experience that has happened to them through life. Andy Weir did a good job at capturing readers minds and curiosity and connective skills. For me as a reader, I have been through similar experiences as Mark Watney where I felt like it was over for me. The day I was scheduled to take my license test, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place when my dad told me he couldn’t find his paperwork for his car that I was planning on using to take the test in. Just like Mark who thought his plans to make water was solid and golden until errors met him and his dangerous experiment to make water for his potato plants literally blew up in his face not once but twice. But just like Mark, I figured ways to turn a bad situation into a good one and kept on working to find a solution which I did when I called the driving school and paid for a car just in the nick of time to take my test. Mark’s solution to his problem was to root up his fully grown patches of potatoes and ration then to last him the majority of the time he spent on Mars by eating small but enough portions of food