Way in the Middle of the Air

Way in the Middle of the Air

"Way in the Middle of the Air" by RAY BRADBURY was published for the first time in 1950. It is a story that centers more on the racial relations than being a story regarding the space. The ideas employed in the story are not complex. The story depicts the colonization of mars, and the people involved in this process are the African Americans who prefer to leave America to find a new way of life on another planet.

"Way in the Middle of the Air" is the only story in the entire novel with its setting on earth. This story clearly draws on a modern political issue and this also happens to be the central theme of the story. Delving into the affairs of racism, this story points out to some of the weaknesses of the writer as the characters portrayed in the story are not fictions and can be compared to real life. Written in 1950, the story seems to be little influenced by the civil rights movement of America as it was written way before the movement started. However, it does centre on one of the most important issue that was then facing the American society; the issue of racism. This story if read with the entire novel will definitely point towards another underlying weakness of the novel. This weakness is the lack of continuity in the entire novel. We do not see any mention of the mass immigration by the Negroes ever again in the novel. This is the case after the war on earth commences and the planet of mars has been evacuated (Smith, 1970).

The central idea of the story does not seem to be pointing towards the fact that the black people are ...