Once again, however, Willie coldly ignores his wife’s concerns, reflecting the tunnel vision created by anger. Barreling outside, Willie rounds up the children and tells them that he’s locking them up—he doesn’t want them to see or even talk about the white man. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”. By tying the rope into a noose, Willie gestures to the United States’ history of racism and cruelty toward black people. Clutching a noose in his hands, Willie asks the crowd if they’re ready. Willie underscores the ways in which black people on Earth were made to feel unwelcome and alienated in society, a fact that catalyzed their desire to move to Mars. When they learn that a rocket is coming from Earth with white travellers, they institute a Jim Crow system of racial segregation in retaliation for how the whites once treated them. Once again, by calling for Jim Crow laws that discriminate against white people, Willie consequently shows the inhumane treatment black people were subjected to on Earth. The old man says that the hill and the tree are both gone. The seat reads, “For Whites: Rear Section.” Willie asks for volunteers in the growing crowd to paint every streetcar in the city. When it lands, the crowd goes silent. Just as the white man used the word “fools” to refer to himself and his fellow Earth people, Willie also calls himself and his community “fools.” In this way, Willie takes responsibility for emboldening the crowd towards vengeance. This is the first indication that certain aspects of racism and prejudice were destroyed in the war. -Graham S. Hattie is clearly concerned about the white man’s arrival but doesn’t voice her worries to her boys, highlighting both her protective nature and her sons’ youthful innocence. At last, there is a feeling of recovery in Hollis turning into a star whereupon a young man makes a desire. LitCharts Teacher Editions. This hints at the way that racism is a learned behavior, as the boys don’t intrinsically believe that the white man is inferior or superior to them because of his skin color—rather, he is simply different. On a roll, Willie shouts that new laws need to be passed banning intermarriages. The car pulls up in front of the Johnson household, and Willie dashes inside in search of guns and rope. The Other Foot. Willie mutters about why the Earth people couldn’t just stay on their own planet and “blow themselves up.” Appalled, Hattie tells her husband that he doesn’t sound very Christian. Adapting the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s famous statement that one cannot step into the same river twice, one could say that no person ever steps twice into the same self. A dense crowd gathers at the landing port, and Willie passes out guns. He advocates writing from personal experience, and such is the case in “The Man Upstairs” because Bradbury considers this story a eulogy of sorts to his grandmother whose culinary skills were always a delight to him. Because “The Other Foot” was published in 1951, Bradbury was imagining a not-so-distant future; Active Themes. Unfazed, Willie responds, “This is the other shoe, Mayor, and the other foot.” Willie yells to the crowd that they will elect a new mayor. Ray Bradbury Contents Prologue: The Illustrated Man The Veldt Kaleidoscope The Other Foot The Highway The Man The Long Rain The Rocket Man The Fire Balloons The Last Night of the World The Exiles No Particular Night or Morning The Fox and the Forest The Visitor The Concrete Mixer Ray Bradbury is fascinated with technology's effect on human relationships, especially within families. Prejudice can be dismantled war defines several stories, including the livestock food! 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