The Book That Saved the Earth: Class 10 English · Chapter 9

9.1 Before you read

Imagine a visitor from another planet who finds your school bag. Inside are a tiffin box, a geometry box, a cricket ball and a library book. With no one to ask, what would the visitor decide about each object? The compass might pass for a weapon, and the tiffin box could look like a tiny safe. This play turns that idea into comedy. Martians land in a room full of books and get almost everything wrong.

The Book That Saved the Earth is a short comic play set far in the future. A Historian in a museum looks back at a strange event and replays it for us, so most of the action is a flashback (Fig. 9.1). Because it is written for the stage, the text looks different from a story. A cast list comes first, the action is split into scenes, and stage directions in brackets tell the actors where to stand and how to behave. Read those directions closely: much of the fun hides in them.

9.2 The play scene by scene

The play has two scenes, wrapped inside the Historian's talk at the start and the end. Scene 1 moves from the museum to the control room on Mars. Scene 2 cuts between that control room and a library on Earth, where three Martian explorers have landed. Seven characters appear, though one of them, the Offstage Voice, is only heard.

Stage directions are written from the actor's point of view. Right means the actor's right as they face the audience, which is the audience's left. Down means nearer the audience and up means further back. Fig. 9.2 uses these terms to show where each character stands.

9.2.1 Scene 1: From a museum to Mars

Our guide is a Historian in the twenty-fifth century who looks after a museum's collection from the twentieth. To her, our age is ancient history, and she names it the Era of the Book: its people wrote books on almost any subject you could think of. Her big claim comes quickly. A Martian invasion planned for 2040 was stopped before it began, and the hero was a book. Rather than explain, she switches on her historiscope, a projector that replays the past, and lets us watch.

The light shifts to Mars Space Control in 2040. Think-Tank, the Commander-in-Chief, sits high on a box, his giant head shaped like an egg and even his robe patterned to look important. His apprentice, Noodle, works the switchboard. Everything about Think-Tank shouts ego. Noodle must bow and recite a string of grand titles before each request, and when he skips a few, he has to begin again. Think-Tank calls Earth a silly little planet that Mars will graciously rule. Before any business, he asks his hand mirror to confirm that he is the cleverest being around, and scolds it for answering too slowly.

Admiring his reflection, he decides that Martians are far better-looking than Earthlings with their small heads. He tells Noodle that if he keeps exercising his mind, he may one day have a balloon brain like his master's. 11Think-Tank assumes that a bigger head means a bigger mind. The rest of the play tests that belief. Then he orders contact with the Martian space probe, because he wants Earth conquered before lunch. The joke lies in the scale: a whole planet is to be swallowed as casually as a snack.

9.2.2 Scene 2: Martians in a library

Scene 2 begins seconds later. The probe has landed, and its three-member crew has taken shelter in the Centerville Public Library, though none of them knows what a library is. Captain Omega is puzzling over the drawers of the card catalogue, Lieutenant Iota has counted two thousand books, and Sergeant Oop is shaking a book in case something falls out. On Mars, Think-Tank puts on enormous goggles to watch, and Noodle opens a voice link.

Each first guess grabs just one clue. Iota sees thousands of similar objects and decides the place must be a storage barn. Oop has visited seven galaxies and seen nothing like this, so he balances an open book on his head and declares the place a hat shop. Omega humbly asks Think-Tank to settle the matter. He studies a book held up to the screen and reasons that Earthlings eat all the time, so this must be a crude snack stand. The book itself is a sandwich: the two covers are the bread and the pages are the filling.

To test the theory, Think-Tank orders Omega to eat one, and the order slides down the ranks like a hot potato. Omega and Iota each find a polite excuse to hand the honour to the next person, until it lands on Oop, who has nobody left below him. His bite settles the question. Think-Tank, fishing for praise, asks whether it wasn't delicious; Oop dutifully agrees with the wording and so confirms it was horrible, as dry as dust.

Now Noodle speaks up, very carefully. He mentions a small scrap of memory: in films of Earth, people did not eat these objects but seemed to use them to communicate. Think-Tank instantly claims this was his own next point. They are communication sandwiches, he announces, so the crew must listen to them. The crew press books to their ears and, naturally, hear nothing at all. Noodle steps in again: Earthlings opened these things and looked at them. Once more Think-Tank adopts the idea as his own, and the books become tools for the eyes rather than the ears.

9.2.3 Scene 2: Cracking the “code”

Think-Tank picks out the largest, most colourful book on the shelf: a big copy of Mother Goose. The crew report pictures of Earthlings and, beside them, thousands of tiny marks that look like a secret code. The Martians cannot read, so ordinary print seems like a cipher to them. Think-Tank begins to worry that Earthlings may be less primitive than he thought. Noodle reminds him that the crew carry vitamin pills meant to sharpen their minds, and Think-Tank presents this as his own brilliant plan. The crew swallow the pills in a stiff, drill-like routine and, as if by magic, can now decipher the writing.

They read out three famous nursery rhymes, and Think-Tank treats each one as secret military intelligence (Fig. 9.4):

1. Mistress Mary describes a girl's garden planted with bells, shells and a row of maids. Think-Tank concludes that Earthlings farm and mine at the same time, raising silver like a crop and even growing explosives (perhaps he hears shells as artillery shells). He tells the invasion fleet to wait.
2. Hey Diddle Diddle is pure nonsense about a fiddling cat, a cow that leaps over the moon and a laughing dog. To Think-Tank it proves that Earth has trained its animals in music and space travel and given even its dogs a sense of humour. Picturing millions of cows attacking from space, he calls off the invasion for the day.
3. Humpty Dumpty is about an egg that tumbles off a wall and cannot be mended. Oop holds up the picture, and the egg looks just like Think-Tank's own enormous head. He screams that Earthlings have spotted him: the line about a great fall must mean they plan to capture him and invade Mars.

Panic takes over. Think-Tank's first thought is a capsule for his own escape. The crew are told to quit Earth immediately and tidy every book back onto the shelves, so that Earthlings never learn they were watched. Then he commands the fleet to evacuate the whole of Mars and head for Alpha Centauri. The object that was nearly lunch has just defeated an empire.

9.2.4 The Historian's ending

The play ends where it began, with the Historian, and she brings news from her own century. Mars and Earth are friends now. Noodle, the assistant nobody took seriously, has taken Think-Tank's place as ruler. Teachers from Earth have shown the Martians what books are for and how to read them, and Marsopolis, the Martian capital, now has a showpiece library. The last joke is saved for the end: one title stays off every Martian reading list for ever, and it is Mother Goose.

9.3 Thinking about the play

9.3.1 The characters

The characters are types, drawn with a few bold strokes. Each stands for an attitude the playwright wants us to laugh at or admire. In a board answer, name a trait and back it with something the character says or does.

Think-Tank is a portrait of a know-all. A think tank is a real term for a group of experts paid to think, and his head is literally enormous, yet he never thinks before he speaks. He builds a theory on one clue, refuses to doubt it and treats every correction as an insult. He is also a bully and, in the end, a coward who thinks of his own escape first. The play's biggest joke is that the being who boasts of the greatest mind in the universe is beaten by verses written for toddlers.

Noodle is the real brain of Mars. In informal English noodle means a person's head, and it is also an old word for a silly person, so even his name hides his worth. He has studied surveyor films of Earth, which means his ideas rest on evidence, not ego. He is humble, patient and tactful, and he never once says that his master is wrong. The ending rewards him: the Historian tells us he became the leader of Mars.

Omega, Iota and Oop show what happens under a ruler who cannot be questioned. Omega obeys every order with a bow, Iota uses good manners to dodge a nasty job, and Oop, at the bottom of the ladder, ends up doing it (Fig. 9.5). Their names are jokes too. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, iota is its smallest letter and means a tiny amount in English, and Oop sounds like the start of “oops”. Oop is the bluntest and most honest of the three, which is why he gets so many laughs.

The Historian is the narrator who frames the play. Speaking from the future, she makes our own time look quaint. Because she tells us at the start that the invasion failed, we can relax and enjoy the Martians' mistakes.

9.3.2 How Noodle handles his boss

Correcting someone powerful is risky, especially a boss who believes he cannot make mistakes. Noodle does it with the same four moves each time (Fig. 9.6). First he flatters, opening with a grand title such as your Brilliance. Next he shrinks his own contribution, calling it a tiny, unimportant scrap of information. Then he offers a fact, not an opinion: what Earthlings were seen doing on film. Finally he lets Think-Tank adopt the idea and announce it as his own. Noodle cares more about the right result than about getting credit.

Is this wisdom or just flattery? A bit of both. The method works on a vain boss and gradually steers the crew from eating books to reading them. It also shows a sad truth about proud rulers: the people around them must hide every truth inside a compliment. A good leader welcomes correction. In Noodle's position, you might keep his politeness but also ask guiding questions that let the boss find the error himself, such as “What did the films show Earthlings doing with these?”

9.3.3 Humour, irony and satire

The play is a comedy, and it mixes several kinds of humour:

• Dramatic irony. We know the “sandwiches” are books; the Martians do not. Every confident statement Think-Tank makes is funny because we can see exactly how wrong it is.
• Situational irony. The opposite of what we expect happens. A book of baby rhymes, not an encyclopedia or a weapons manual, saves the planet, and the self-declared genius is outdone by his humble helper.
• Slapstick. Physical comedy fills the library scenes: a book worn as a hat, a bite of paper, books pressed to ears, a group gulp of pills, a ruler screaming and clutching his head.
• Parody and wordplay. The mirror scene copies Snow White. Think-Tank's Elementary, my dear Omega echoes the line popularly linked with Sherlock Holmes. Think-Tank, Noodle and Oop are joke names.
• Taking nonsense literally. The Martians treat silly rhymes as hard fact. The gap between the playful verses and Think-Tank's solemn analysis is the heart of the comedy.

Beneath the fun lies satire. The play mocks rulers who confuse power with intelligence, and systems in which nobody dares to tell the boss he is wrong. It also mocks the habit of calling others primitive simply because they are different: Think-Tank sneers at Earthlings' small heads, yet cannot read a children's book. Finally, it gently teases us. People in the future may find our habits as puzzling as the Martians find a library.

The title sounds like the start of a serious adventure about a great book. The real hero is a children's rhyme collection, and it saves Earth not through wisdom but through being misunderstood. That gap between the grand title and the silly reason is one more joke.

9.3.4 Themes and message

• Arrogance and false intelligence. A big head is not a big mind. Think-Tank's pride makes him jump to conclusions, and pride leads to his fall.
• Humility and wisdom. Noodle listens, observes and stays modest, and the humble one rises to lead.
• Misreading. When we misinterpret words out of context and never check, we reach absurd conclusions. In real life the result can be quarrels, panic or bad decisions.
• Blind obedience. When nobody may question the boss, mistakes multiply and the weakest member pays.
• The value of books and reading. Books carry a culture's ideas; even rhymes say something about the people who wrote them. Learning to read is what turns the frightened Martians of 2040 into the friendly ones of the Historian's time.
• Peace through understanding. War is avoided by accident, but lasting friendship comes from teaching, reading and a library.

9.4 Talk about it and write

9.4.1 Talk: when we misread

Think-Tank turns three harmless rhymes into three threats. He reads a nonsense verse as news, takes a cartoon egg as a portrait of himself and treats a line about a fall as a battle plan. Ordinary people misread things too, usually for the same reasons: missing context, a word with two meanings, or a fear that colours what we see. Fig. 9.7 compares Think-Tank's way with a better one.

9.4.2 Talk: do Martians speak English?

9.4.3 Debate: books and screens

The Historian speaks of the Era of the Book as if it has ended. Is our own age ending it? Today you can read on a phone, listen to audiobooks and watch lessons online. Yet printed books have not disappeared: libraries, bookshops and school bags are still full of them. Use the comparison below to prepare for a class debate.

9.4.4 Writing: a paragraph on your favourite book

A good book is a patient friend. It is always there, never gets bored of you, carries you to places you cannot visit and lets you meet minds you will never meet in person. You can stop, return and reread as often as you like. Your textbook asks you to write a paragraph about the book you love most. Use the plan below, then read the model.

9.5 Board exam practice

For the supplementary reader, board papers ask short answers of about 40–50 words and long answers of about 100–120 words. Examiners look for the right content, evidence from the play and a clear structure. Fig. 9.8 shows how to divide a long answer. The extract sets below also help you revise the play in detail.