“Letters to the Editor: Alien Cannibals”

 “Letters to the Editor: Alien Cannibals” is a letter and its main purpose is to give an opinion about the authors belief of having to be much more careful with what they do in space because aliens will commit genocide in Earth if they get a lot of information. Text (b) (no name) is a narrative extract that comes from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and its purpose is to narrate the story of a man that is scared of staying an the Earth and wants to go to Mars because he thoughts that it would be a “big atomic war on Earth.” This is also a social criticism because the author says words such as : “censorship”, “conscription”, “statism”, “government control” that clearly shows what he thinks about the society. Although these texts are completely different regarding narrator, tone, diction and structure, the theme is the same for both cases: aliens and the contact with them.

Text (a) is written in the first person because it is a letter and the audience are the readers of the newspaper or magazine that like this topic. Text (b) is in third person omniscient and the audience are all the people interested in science fiction novels. The first text is from a negative point of view because the author is trying to persuade the audience that contact with aliens will provoke a genocide, something that should not be attempted while the second one is from a positive point of view because he wants to go to Mars cos he is afraid of being on Earth.

The tone in both texts is created by the diction. On the one hand, text (a) is constant, non-emotional though personal, ironic, analytical and persuasive. It is constant because there is no change, he is a man writing a letter about something that he has clearly in mind and he knows what he feels, is not that he changes in the middle. It is ironic thanks to the diction and it is created with words such as “lunatic”, “cannibals” and “friendly aliens.” It is analytical because the author is thinking `what would happen if…`: “if there are aliens in the constellation Hercules, this may…” Finally, it is persuasive because he wants to persuade the people not to give a lot of information to the aliens. Just from the beginning of the text, we know that we are going to read an ironic text because of the title of the letter “Alien Cannibals” that is very ironic and its making fun of the writer of the first article. On the other hand, text (b) has informal diction given by words such as: “he”, “couldn’t”, “wouldn’t”, “kick it down”, “this and that”. The tone in this text is reflective and of desperation because he does not want to be on Earth because he is afraid of an atomic war. It is reflective because it is a social criticism.

In terms of structure they are different because one is a letter and the other, a narrative. The letter has five paragraphs and it is to a newspaper or magazine. Although we all know it is a letter by reading it, it has no clear format of a letter cos it has no date and no clear address: there is only a reference to the village but not the exact address “Stockton-on-Tess”. Text (b) has one paragraphs with more than four sentences and the rest of the paragraphs have less than sentences (some ones are of one sentence only) . The first paragraph is long and is a mixture of long and short sentences, while the others are short. Sentences vary from long to short in all the text: “now were they going to open the gate and let him in to board the Third Expeditionary Rocket, or was he going to have to kick it down?”, “they told him to shut up”, “you could have Earth!”

Regarding style, both authors are very different but have one thing in common: they wrote some word in italics. In text (a) the word in italics is “they” referring to aliens. The author does this in order to highlight the idea that if they truly exist, they may be doing everything that he says on the text. It is also in italics because, we, as human beings, if they exist, we really don’t know what kind of creatures they are. On the other text, the author uses two words in italics: “then why couldn’t he go to Mars” and “they didn’t know for sure”. On the first case, the word he is in italics because it’s a way to make him an special person and on the second one,, it is on italics to highlight the idea that they really don’t know if they were going to come back from Mars because the first two expeditions had failed. On the letter, the author makes a very important comparison for every human being: “witness the colonisation of the Americans, Africa and Australia”. This is a comparison between the colonisation of the continents and what the aliens were going to do with the Earth if the people “advertise our presence in space”. Finally, text (b) uses a lot of repetitions, enumerations and there are lots of punctuation marks. The repetition on the words “Earth”, “Mars”, and “rocket” are to emphasize the protagonists idea of getting on the rocket, leaving the Earth and going to Mars. The enumerations are used to highlight these ideas and to make them see as if they were a hundred. For example, when you read “wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science”, the author is naming seven things and they seem to be like twenty. The other example is : “his good right hand, his heart, his head” that has the same function that the first one: he is offering everything that he has.

In conclusion although the texts have the same theme, they differ in everything else. I think that both texts are effective because the audience feels what they wanted to reflect : it makes the people think that maybe he is right and that maybe one day, we will be conquered by aliens, and in the second text, the audience feels pity that the protagonist can’t go to Mars and that he has to stay on Earth and to live the `big atomic war.`