Question 10: Mark's Backstory

The book opens to Mark Watney explaining how he became stranded on Mars and proceeds to detail all of the adventures and struggles that he went through. The book is primarily set on the surface of Mars with scattered chapters dedicated to the perspective of those on Earth. I hadn’t put much thought into the lack of backstory before reading this question, but it got me thinking. I think the author left out everything about Mark’s past because it is somewhat irrelevant. Despite his past, he is now stranded on Mars with only the available supplies and his wits to survive. The lack of information about his past allows us to focus on his present situation. Backstory could be perceived as clutter in the way of the gritty details of his survival. On the other hand, it would have been interesting to know more about Mark’s past. He briefly mentions a few vague details about his life back on Earth such as the fact that he graduated from the University of Chicago with his undergrad in botany (Weir 13) and that he played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. He says, “You may not have guessed that this botanist/mechanical engineer was a bit of a nerd in high school, but indeed I was” (Weir 23-24). It is mentioned a couple times that Mark’s parents live in Chicago. On Thanksgiving he says, “My family will be gathering in Chicago for the usual feast at my parents’ house” (Weir 16). This passage seems to denote that Mark has at least somewhat of a stable family life. Although there is obviously no way to know for sure, we can assume that Mark had a fairly normal childhood and life leading up to the Ares 3 mission. We know that he was excited about the mission, “Six days into what should be the greatest month of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare” (Weir 1). Perhaps he had a lifelong dream of being an astronaut only to have disaster strike when his dream was finally realized. Overall, I think that Weir provides just the tiniest bit of backstory to keep the story believable but focused on the issue at hand. The amount of information he provided is more than sufficient for the purposes of this book.