30 pages • 1 hour read
The Other Foot
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Symbols & Motifs
Rope
Rope is the central symbol of “The Other Foot.” It first appears among the supplies Willie gathers from the house; other Martians gather it up along with guns and paint in preparation for the white man’s arrival; Willie holds a coil of rope ending in a noose as he listens to the old man’s speech and Hattie’s questions. However, the rope was laden with meaning before the story began. Because of its consistent use in lynchings, readers in 1951 would have immediately recognized the significance of Willie hearing that a white man was arriving and dealing with the news by searching for rope. Rope was the final piece of the murder of Willie’s father as his body was dangled from a tree branch; rope was used to cordon off seats in theaters and on public transit to segregate Black Americans; and the Martians begin “roping off” these areas in preparation for the white man’s landing. On Earth, rope represented white authority and violence; on Mars, it reflects the same power in Black hands. By greeting the old man with rope already tied into a noose, Willie makes his intentions clear, and by dropping the rope at the end of the story, he demonstrates his change of heart.
Dark and Light Colors
The contrast between dark and light colors is as central to “The Other Foot” as it is to the history of American racism. In the opening paragraph of the story, the inhabitants of Mars are described as the “dark people,” and only in later sentences is this description tied to their skin color.
Despite taking place in a society where everyone has dark skin to some extent, darkness is consistently used to suggest ignorance, danger, and violence. Willie, searching through the attic for his guns, is too dark to see in a black space, even though there is enough light that the metal of the weapons is described as “glittering.” On the drive to the airport, when Hattie feels most consumed by the crowd, she presses her “dark hands” together to push away her terror. The crowd that greets the rocket is a “dark crowd” and “one dark body with a thousand arms” reaches for weapons (Paragraph 84).
However, light colors are not portrayed in a much more positive light. White and yellow paint are used to mark off segregated seats; the houses of the wealthy in Greenwater are “white mortuaries;” and a trolley car taking Martians to the airport is labeled “TO THE WHITE MAN’S LANDING” (Paragraph 85). White is also a racial identifier; it is described in negative terms by the Martian adults even as the children who have never seen a white face struggle to imagine skin the color of milk, chalk, or flowers.
Wherever light and dark colors are racialized, they are used to represent bigotry and real or threatened violence. It is only at the end, after he has dropped the rope, that Willie describes himself as having “seen the white man” as he truly is (Paragraph 213).
Sight and Seeing
The first action the Martians take in “The Other Foot” is to look up at the sky. Looking, sight, and seeing recur persistently throughout the story, usually as a means of understanding (or failing to do so). Hattie’s children, for example, ask her to describe seeing white people and then fail to understand the significance of the white man’s arrival. Martians traveling to the airport are initially described as going “to see that man come in” (Paragraph 45), and when asked about it, Mr. Brown replies, “That appears to be just right” (Paragraph 46, emphasis added). Although the arrival of the white man is initially treated as an entertaining spectacle, the references to vision become less frequent as the crowd turns ugly and violence looms. Bradbury goes out of his way to suggest that the old man “saw but did not see the guns and the ropes” (Paragraph 127), indicating that he either fails to perceive or chooses to ignore the danger of his situation.
The motif of sight returns at the end of the story, when the children ask Hattie and Willie whether they have “seen the white man” and Willie acknowledges his belated understanding by saying: “Seems like for the first time today I really seen the white man—I really seen him clear” (Paragraph 213).
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By Ray Bradbury
