Bookworm_Girl I was really just intending to consider that things such as the Cold War, struggles for rights, freedoms, etc. did not seem to me to be of any specific importance compared to those same things as have occurred throughout history, or compared with other world events preceding the writing of the short stories in the last years of the 1940s to make it a cinch that Bradbury was sending messages about them. I was not intending to refute history so please take the following comment as a description of where I am coming from in that rather than being any specific disagreement. Also, as I said in my earlier post, whether there are intentional messages or propaganda in
Chronicles I am open minded about, it just seems to me that there is no specific reason for there to have been so.
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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
...The Cold War started in the mid to late 1940s after WWII, although some historians even date it back to the Russian revolution of 1917. George Orwell used the term in 1945. The McCarthy era started around the time the book was published...
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With respect to the Cold War itself insofar as it relates to the book, that is the real threat of nuclear war between the West and the USSR in the '50s and '60s, I have considered that it post dates the book. As I mentioned Russia had not even tested a nuclear device until around the time the short stories were published.
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Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
...India and Pakistan fought for independence in the 1940s, achieving it by 1947. Lots was also happening to define the borders of the Middle Eastern countries as we know them today. Israel declared independence in 1948. Some African colonies had also gained independence by the time this book was published to be accelerated after WWII. Then there was the Atlantic Charter in the early 1940s between the US and UK attempting to define post-war goals and rights of people to self-determination.
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I was taking "fought" as meaning something definitive such as a war for independence. If one is using the word "fought" as just being a struggle, whether peaceful (e.g. Ghandi) or including local rebellions (as in most countries histories, including my own, whether colonies or not), then such struggles have been very commonplace through history for millennia, whether that is to seek independence from the government of another country or to seek independence from their own government (even here in peaceful, little old NZ there are people who consider themselves "struggling" for their own independence from our independent democratic government, and indeed as recently as 9 years ago a number were charged with planning terrorist acts seeking to fight for such independence). In my view there was nothing special regarding these things during or preceding the times when the short stories were conceived.
Regarding African countries, prior to 1950 the only African countries to achieve independence (as far as I am aware) were Liberia (that way back in mid 19th Century and it is questionable as to whether it ever was colonised), South Africa and Egypt. I confess that I had forgotten the Egyptian Revolution (1919) but that was the only one of the three countries to have to have "fought" in the sense of a "war" as I was interpreting it. Apart from a couple in the '50s, all other African independences were post 1960. There is no disagreement that there were "struggles" prior to 1950, but I was looking at it from the point of view that such struggles had been going on for millennia so did not regard their existence as being special in a way giving any special encouragement to Bradbury promoting propaganda in the stories. If the stories were written post 1960 my view may have been different.
As far as the Middle East is concerned the history of struggles is so convoluted and commonplace over millennia that I won't even get started commenting
. While there were some rebellions in India (as there were in other colonies, even Canada, for example) there was no war.
I quite agree that one can draw parallels with such struggles and that of colonisation by Earthlings and the plight of the Martian,s but I don't see any special reason why they may be no more than providing a frame for the stories. If there had been a series of actual wars of independence preceding the time the stories were written then perhaps, in my view, there would have been. I'll leave it there in my state of indecision
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