“The Visitor” Summary & Analysis

Saul Williams wakes in his tent at seven o’clock in the morning, and laments how far he is from Earth. He longs to go home, but with lungs “full of the ‘blood rust’” knows this is impossible. The Martian morning is quiet and still, without any wind.

Saul, desperate for Earth, tries to imagine himself in New York City to no avail. He then attempts to die by mentally telling his heart to stop; this also proves futile, and he lacks “the nerve” to take more direct action such as leaping from a cliff or slitting his wrists.

After a nap, Saul’s mouth has filled with blood. Blood rust is an incurable, contagious disease that kills its victims slowly over the course of a year. Those suffering have been quarantined on Mars, where Saul now remains, “bleeding all the time, and lonely.”

Saul walks towards a man lying on a filthy blanket near the ruins of an ancient city. Decrying his loneliness, Saul says he wishes the other man could talk, and asks why “intellectuals” never catch the disease nor get sent to Mars. The man tells Saul he has grown too weary to think, and recalls one day, months earlier, when they had talked about Aristotle. Saul wishes he were sicker so that he wouldn’t care about being an intellectual. The man then says that, in about six months, Saul will be as sick as he is, and will care about nothing but sleep—which is “a nice thought.”

Saul walks away and looks out over the bottom of the dried-up Martian sea, where many other men lay sleeping. They are all alone, Saul observes, “each grown into himself.” When Saul first arrived, the men used to gather around a fire and talk about nothing but Earth. Now, social interaction is too exhausting.

Again, Saul wants to be back on Earth “so bad it hurts.” He wants Earth “more than food or a woman or anything,” reflecting that Earth is “a thing for the mind,” whereas those other pleasures are for “the weak body.”

There is a flash of metal in the sky, and a rocket suddenly touches down on the dead sea bottom. Two men in protective suits lead a third onto the planet’s surface, construct a tent, and then promptly re-board the rocket, leaving the third man behind.

In his excitement, Saul ignores his exhaustion and rushes over to the new arrival. He appears surprisingly young and “fresh in spite of his illness.” The young man introduces himself as Leonard Mark.

Saul asks Mark about the state of New York, at which point the city itself suddenly erupts around him—neon lights, taxis, harbors, and all. Terrified and confused, Saul screams for it to stop. The city fades, and Saul is again standing on Mars across from Mark. Saul asks if Mark created the vision with his mind, which Mark confirms. Suddenly elated, Saul tells the visitor how glad he is that he’s there.

At noon that day, over coffee, Mark tells Saul that he was born with his ability, which he describes as “telepathy and thought transference,” or “a form of hypnotism which affects all of the sensual organs at once.” Mark’s mother was in the “blowup of London” in ‘57, and he used to travel the world with his “act.” Most people thought he was faking his power, and he preferred having only a select few aware of the true extent of his abilities. 

Mark asks Saul what he would prefer to be doing more than anything else, and Saul responds that he’d like to be swimming in a beloved childhood creek. Almost immediately, Saul is there in his mind, diving into the water; to Mark, Saul is flailing around on the Martian sand. Upon returning from the vision, Saul tries to thank Mark by giving him his last bar of chocolate. Mark refuses, insisting he’s only using his power because it makes Saul happy.

Saul images all the places Mark will take him and all of the philosophers he’ll be able to talk to through Mark’s talent. He will visit Greece and Rome and talk to men like Darwin and Nietzsche. This ability, Saul decides, is even “better than life ever was.”

Coming down from his reverie, Saul spots other men in the distance slowly moving towards him and Mark. He tells Mark they must leave, because the other men are “insane” and will fight—even kill—to “own” Mark and his power. Mark scoffs, asserting that he is a free man and belongs to no one—including Saul. Saul realizes he hadn’t considered this.

Saul again insists Mark leave, but Mark calls him “too possessive.” Growing angry, Saul feels “an ugliness” rise within himself and violently attacks Mark, knocking him unconscious. He lifts Mark in his arms and carries him away to the hills, falling once, but not stopping.

Mark awakens tied up in a dark cave. He calls Saul, who is tending to a fire, a fool and mocks his greed. Saul snaps at Mark to shut up. Mark then conjures hell around them, complete with pits of brimstone and walls of flame, before laughing and deeming himself “the intellectual bride of a man insane with loneliness.”

Saul tells Mark he’ll free him if he promises not to run away, but Mark again insists that he is not anyone’s property. He admonishes Saul, saying he had been more than happy to conjure “these little hypnotic favors,” and could have kept all of the men happy if only Saul had been willing to share.

Saul cries that he is sorry, but that the other men would never have agreed to that. Mark accuses Saul of being no different from the others, before saying that he heard a noise at the entrance to the cave.

Saul goes to investigate the noise; finding nothing, he returns to a now-empty cave. He shouts frantically for Mark but receives no answer. However, he notices a large boulder near the cave’s wall, and approaches it with a knife. Before he can plunge it into the stone, the boulder disappears; in its place stands Mark. Saul looks crazed, and grips Mark by the throat. In Mark’s gaze, however, Saul recognizes that if he kills the visitor, he also kills any hope of escaping his Martian existence. Just as Saul releases Mark, five men appear at the entrance to the cave. Mark laughs and invites them inside.

The men argue ferociously until dawn. Mark has conjured a conference hall and marble table, around which the men sit. They are filthy and greedy-eyed, intent on possessing “their treasure.”

In an effort to settle things, Mark suggests creating appointments so that each man gets equal time with him every week. Saul, however, will be on probation for his past behavior; Saul apologizes, insisting he didn’t realize what he was doing.

Mark offers up a schedule, which includes time to himself as well. The other men seem to nod in agreement as he doles out appointment times. Mark insists that this should be “better than nothing.”

One of the men, Johnson, proposes that they instead force Mark to perform, and torture him if he refuses. They are five against one, Johnson insists, and as such should be the ones telling Mark what to do.

Mark urges the others not to listen to Johnson, calling the man crazy and asserting that as soon as the others let their guards down, Johnson will kill them. In fact, Mark continues, none of the men can trust each other; they will all attempt murder in the name of keeping Mark for themselves.

The men look at each other with suspicion and understand that Mark is correct. Saul, meanwhile, begins to understand the gravity of his mistake, realizing that they “were all wrong,” and “worse than lost.”

After a tense silence, Mark speaks up again, saying that one of the men has a gun, and the others must find it before it’s too late. At this, the others jump up and wildly try to search each other. Johnson pulls the gun out of his jacket and shoots another man, Smith, in the chest. Smith falls to the ground, dead, yet Johnson continues shooting.

Mark screams for the men to stop and begins conjuring New York City around them. The men grow confused in the midst of the blossoming city, yet Johnson keeps firing his gun. Saul rushes to tackle Johnson to the ground and wrench away the gun, which goes off a final time. The men stop fighting as a “terrible silence” ensues.

New York begins to collapse, buildings crumpling in on themselves with hisses and sighs. Mark stands in the middle of it all, a red hole in his chest. He collapses. The men stand blinking in horror.

The cave grows cold. Realizing he still has the gun in his hand, Saul throws it as far as he can without watching where it lands. He calls out Mark’s name and grabs his limp hand, but the body is still. “We’ve killed him,” Saul says, before instructing the others to bury him. He wants nothing more to do with any of them.

Saul lies on the ground, too weak to move, and hears someone digging in the background. He wants to sleep, and to dream of New York. Saul wonders how Mark brought them the visions and tries his hardest to imagine the city around him. It is no use; the city is gone forever, Saul understands. He will spend the rest of his days searching for it but never finding it, not even in his dreams. Before he falls asleep, Saul hears the spade digging a hole in the earth, “into which, with a tremendous crash […] New York collapsed, fell, and was buried.” He cries himself to sleep.