Stranger in a Strange Land

“Smith translated the questions. The inclusion of both of them in the query was confusing; he decided that it might symbolize a wish to cherish and grow close.”

Much of Smith’s early development is spent trying to understand human language. When Gillian addresses him conversationally as “we”—“how are we feeling today?” (14)—Smith takes it literally, assuming she is offering a chance to bond in some way. The scene captures the nuances of language and thought, and how the two are inextricably linked. When Smith founds his Church, he insists initiates learn Martian. Only by understanding the language can they understand the subtleties of Martian thought and philosophy.

“Secrecy begets tyranny.”

Caxton argues that Smith must be free to be out in the world, not held prisoner by a paranoid government. He succinctly makes the case for a free press, without which despots thrive behind a veil of secrecy.

“Why take a chance on old-fashioned, unesthetic, harmful, unsure methods? Why risk losing his love and respect?”

As Gillian and Ben watch the news, the newscaster reads an advertisement. Heinlein parodies both the commercialization of the news and the advertising business itself. An ad for birth control attempts to persuade female customers by threatening the loss of their male partners’ “love and respect”—a tactic of manipulation rooted in patriarchal gender roles.

“Some nurses will take any blame from a doctor—but not me.”

Gillian, having discovered Smith’s presence in her hospital wing, displays a cool head under pressure when being questioned by a doctor. She immediately perceives his discomfort when he realizes she has been sneaking into rooms against orders, but she is savvy enough to take advantage of that fear and use it against him. She insists on calling the wing “supervisor” to validate her actions, betting that the doctor will drop his charge against her. She is correct, and her defiance also reflects an unequal power dynamic between doctors and nurses—doctors as gods beyond question and nurses as mere serfs in their presence.

“If a water brother selected for him such strange discorporation, he would cherish it and try to grok.”

Martian culture is so vastly different from Terran that even something as basic as a fear of death is foreign to them. Not only would Smith happily discorporate if Gillian requested it—implying an unquestioning trust—but he would consider it an honor, and he would contemplate the act and try to fully understand it. The implicit pact between water brothers supersedes all else. Any request is beyond question, and later, when Smith and Gillian share water with Patricia, Gillian tries to impart the significance of the act. As a water brother, she must be prepared to gladly give her life if Smith requests it.

“He had more than his share of that streak of anarchy which was the birthright of every American; pitting himself against the planetary government filled him with sharper zest than he had felt in a generation.”

One of the keys to understanding Jubal Harshaw is his contrarianism. He not only feels compelled to play Devil’s Advocate, but he relishes the opportunity, seeing it as his birthright as an American. Without old curmudgeons like Harshaw, Heinlein implies, the levers of power would go unchecked, the citizenry duped by false promises of happiness (advertising) and civic engagement. American history is filled with such figures—Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr.—and indeed, democracy cannot function without them.

“All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were colored and controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.”

Heinlein suggests, in his eloquent way, that humans are driven and controlled by their sexual imperative, that the concomitance of sex and love, of biology and emotion, is uniquely human. Reproduction on Mars is purely for producing nestlings. It is the spiritual component of sexual pleasure, that moment of loss of self that humans enjoy, that infatuates Smith and impels him to make sexual freedom a central tenet of his religion.

“You're forcing on him your own narrow-minded, middle-class, Bible Belt morality.”

Jubal’s libertarian streak comes out when Gillian insists that Smith wear clothing. Gillian insists that he must learn “necessary customs,” but Jubal, always ready to poke a stick at convention, argues that, at least here in his home, clothing is optional. Gillian takes a practical approach, wanting simply to prepare Smith for the real world, while Jubal wants to challenge convention with Smith as a convenient test subject.

“Harshaw stopped to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent—was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize was far in advance of human culture in mysterious ways.”

When Jubal witnesses not only Smith’s deadly power but his apparent disregard for life, he sees Smith in a new light. By outward appearances, he is a naïve child, but just as a gun in the hands of a child is dangerous, so too is Smith’s power in the hands of someone who doesn’t see the moral repercussions of “disappearing” someone. Smith’s learning curve is steep, not only with language but with human culture as well. If the government finds out about this power, he fears they will weaponize it without a second thought.

“Though I’ve never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.”

Harshaw, an avowed agnostic, makes a classic argument against organized religion: the reliance on unquestioning faith. Harshaw bases his decisions on evidence, and the idea that a God, an allegedly rational one, would demand belief without proof seems counterintuitive to him.

“Harshaw recalled the tragedy that relativity had been for many scientists. Unable to digest it, they had taken refuge in anger at Einstein.”

Smith’s abilities are so revolutionary that they challenge human conceptions of physics. Harshaw is keenly aware that change doesn’t come easily, and bringers of change often tread in dangerous waters. His fears are justified when Smith’s church, challenging the status quo, is bombed, and Smith is martyred at the hands of an angry mob. The crowd, unable (or unwilling) to hear Smith’s message and inflamed by media and religious authorities, turns to violence to confront what it doesn’t understand. A similar fate befell Galileo, whose theories angered the Church, which forced him to recant under threat of death.

“Man was his own grimmest joke on himself.”

Harshaw considers humanity from the perspective of a highly advanced race, viewing human achievements as paltry compared to their one true talent: killing each other. While Harshaw’s opinion may be tainted by age and cynicism, he groks that the Martian Old Ones may look upon Earth as a failed evolutionary experiment, a race vastly inferior to their own—until he remembers another unique gift humans possess: laughter.

“[I]t was necessary to go beyond shape to essence in order to grok.”

When Federation law enforcement arrives at Jubal’s doorstep to serve warrants and recapture Smith, the Man from Mars is torn between protecting his water brothers and obeying Jubal’s rule against killing anyone who is not a direct threat. Jubal has told him that a gun, in and of itself, may not be a threat, but the person carrying it may be, and Smith is forced to think quickly. His “soul,” roaming free of his body, senses the shapes of guns under the officers’ clothing, but he must take the extra step before acting. He must determine the essence of these shapes. Once he determines these men are indeed carrying weapons, he makes an independent decision to vanish them. This moment represents an important step in Smith’s maturation process—the ability to decide for himself and accept the consequences of his choice.

“Jubal did not care who was to blame—it all confirmed his conviction that technology had reached its peak with the Model-T Ford and had been growing decadent ever since.”

A common trait of the archetypal curmudgeon is impatience with all things new, including technology, and Harshaw fits the bill. He tolerates Duke’s prejudice against Smith in part because Duke keeps all the gadgets running. He sees technology as necessary, but he doesn’t have to like it. He looks at the past with rose-colored glasses, another trait common to those of a certain age, and it exemplifies his habit of critiquing harshly that which doesn’t meet his approval.

“Its worst fault is that its leaders reflect their constituents—a low level, but what can you expect?”

Harshaw evaluates everything from political systems to modern art. A central problem with Democracy, Harshaw argues, is that its leadership tends to gravitate to the lowest common denominator, to the basest of its citizenry. Indeed, appealing to the most educated and cultured only earns one the label of “elitist,” a political death sentence.

“Terrifying and beautiful! Why, these people must be preparing to abandon their city to its thoughts before it shattered under the strain and became not.”

Smith is awed by the size of human cities and by their frenetic activity. Here is another example of Smith’s culture shock, imagining cities as sentient, ready to collapse under the weight of their own experiences. He underestimates the human capacity to tolerate chaos. On Mars, even the Old Ones would risk discorporation by trying to grok such a place, but humans walk the busy streets, living out their lives in casual acceptance. The city—Washington, D.C.—is a thing of beauty, but Smith dares not try to grok it in full.

“Language itself shapes a man's basic ideas.”

Harshaw and Dr. Mahmoud discuss the importance of language in understanding the subtleties of a culture. Grok, claims Mahmoud, is “the most important word in the language” (212), and to truly understand it in all its complexity and connotations, one must speak Martian. Without the native language as a reference point, one will always be translating from their own language and bringing their own cultural references to bear on an entirely different view of the world. Smith is aware of this when he starts The Church of All Worlds, which is why, before any initiate can progress, they must learn Martian to truly grok the message Smith is preaching.

“Mike was dazzled with the magnificent beauty of money.”

The concept of money, of economic systems, is utterly foreign to Smith until he is able to contextualize it as an abstraction, a mere idea on which the entire world is built. The fact that so much Terran capital—economic, social, philosophical—rests on these colorful symbols awes the Man from Mars. This moment is key in Smith’s intellectual development. For a human alien struggling to grok Earth culture, someone who takes ideas very literally, to grasp an intangible concept like money reflects a step forward in abstract thinking.

“Hitler started with less and all he peddled was hate. For repeat trade happiness is sounder merchandise.”

Critiquing the Fosterite service they’ve just attended, Harshaw argues that Fosterism is a very sound business model. While hate can rile the masses into unspeakable savagery, offering them happiness—guilt-free—will always bring them back for more. The use of “trade” and “merchandise” reflects Harshaw’s skepticism of religion as little more than another offshoot of capitalism.

“I know what's wrong; I'm not a man, I'm a Martian—a Martian in a body of the wrong shape.”

One of the most difficult concepts for Smith to understand is religion, specifically the organization of religions into bureaucratic institutions. Faith, spirituality, and the concept of harmony with the cosmos are fundamental parts of the Martian experience; there is no need for clergy to interpret and sanction something that every Martian instinctively knows. Once again, Smith runs up against the problem of culture and language, and his otherness is an obstacle he fears he may never overcome.

“They laugh because it hurts…because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.”

When Smith witnesses a group of monkeys in the zoo asserting dominance over other, weaker monkeys, the spectacle is so upsetting and yet so human that Smith’s only response is laughter (the first time he’s ever laughed). In that one moment, he fully understands humans in all their cruelty and beauty. Up to this moment, not only has he never laughed, he’s never understood laughter; however, in this single, epiphanic moment, he groks the reason humans laugh: It’s the only adequate response to the pain and terror of being alive.

“The time to back out was when you got there; you saw at once that their customs were not yours.”

When Ben, after spending a night with Dawn, suddenly panics at the proposal of “growing closer” with Gillian and Smith, Jubal chastises him for hypocrisy. He argues that Ben is more than happy to enjoy a night of sexual pleasure with a beautiful woman, but that he fails to understand that, in Smith’s church, sexual pleasure is more than a one-night stand. If Ben is going to become a member, Harshaw argues, he must play by Smith’s rules, not his own, and that means appreciating sex as a spiritual exercise regardless of gender or number of partners.

“The prosecutor was not interested in antichrists—but there was a primary coming up.”

When the leaders of established religions begin to push back against Smith’s Church of All Worlds—labeling him “antichrist” and “false prophet”—the local District Attorney faces a conundrum. While religious matters are not his purview, he is facing reelection, and Churches represent millions of votes. Heinlein satirizes public officials who so readily betray their public oaths (and the Constitution) for the opportunity to remain in power.