"The Man from Mars"
In the short story "The Man from Mars" by Margaret Atwood, Christine, the main character, is pursued by "a person from another culture." As the Christine's relationship with this man evolves, her ideas about people from another culture begin to surface. Her views are results of her mother's ideologies and her social background. The story exposes prejudice attitudes in a person who thinks she has, "done my bit for internationalism."
From the beginning, Christine expresses a general ignorant attitude towards people who are of a different cultural background from her. The two people in the story who expose her to different cultures are the man who is pursuing her and the servant girl. Christine describes the man as what her family would refer to him, "a person from another culture." Thinking that he is an international student, her immediate reaction is to give him "her official welcoming smile." Her smile implies a force of false emotions to appear warm and welcoming. When she speaks to the man Christine reduces her speech to simplistic over-exaggerated language indicating the low intelligence Christine believes the man to have. She makes sense of his actions through an ignorant belief that it is because of his culture he acts so different. When the man writes his name on a piece of paper and asks her to do the same, Christine thinks, “In his culture…this exchange of names on pieces of paper was probably a formal politeness, like saying thank you.” Atwood shows Christine’s inability to identify with the man in the title, “The Man from Mars.” The man is from a country as remote from Christine as another planet.