58 pages • 1-hour read
Atmosphere: A Love Story
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section discusses anti-gay bias, gender discrimination, and death.
Stars
Stars are the novel’s primary symbol given the subject matter of spaceflight and Joan’s astronomy expertise. Throughout the narrative, Joan discusses her passion for stargazing and the importance of stars not only in her own life but within the greater context of humanity. As such, stars symbolize many things depending on the context. First, stars represent Joan’s passion and ambition, first sparked during a trip to Joshua Tree National Park with her parents as a child, after which she begged for a telescope. From this moment, Joan knew that she would study stars and wished to travel in space. This ambition, long thwarted by gender discrimination, drives her to apply for NASA.
In addition, stars symbolize human connection. Joan elaborates on this symbolism several times in the novel. In her philosophy, stars symbolize a complex relationship between religion and science, between history and time, through which all humans are connected. In Chapter 3, she states, “To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at the same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding” (43). In Chapter 5, stars represent kinship because everything in the universe, including humans, is made of the same basic elements as stars, so all matter is therefore connected.
Joan expands on this philosophy in Chapter 11, when she argues that “God is the universe” (187) and that human beings are also the universe, concluding, “Life is God. My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet” (188). By Joan’s estimation, the stars symbolize the inherent interconnection between all things, from human beings to the planets to time itself. Joan, and later Vanessa, derive enormous comfort from this philosophy of interconnection, which becomes a central idea in the novel.
Flight
If stars are the primary symbol of Joan’s worldview, flight is the primary symbol of Vanessa’s. For Vanessa, flying symbolizes peace, hope, and her personal sense of identity. She credits her father’s friend Bill with first introducing her to this sensation, explaining that he taught her to fly and how “it was the first time I remember feeling… peace” (95). After her teen years feeling lost, flying brought her closest to the person she wanted to be. Elaborating on this in Chapter 13, she says that she often feels lost on the ground, but in the air she can “be [herself] in a way that [she’s] not sure [she] can be down there” (219). This sense of identity fuels her ambition.
Moreover, flight is hopeful. Vanessa makes this argument in Chapter 11 when she summarizes the history of the Wrights brothers’ first flight in 1903. For Vanessa, and the novel, flight represents the human ability to push past the limits of what seems impossible and discover what people can do when they put their minds to it. In this way, flight symbolizes hope for the future, both for humanity as a whole and for Vanessa personally. This hope drives her forward, particularly in her ambition to pilot the space shuttle. Though gender discrimination at NASA has prevented her, or any woman, from doing so, she maintains hope to do so in the future.
Legacy
A motif that appears throughout the novel in small and large ways is legacy. Joan defines the concept of legacy as the ways people can “share something of the past with a person who could bring it further into the future” (211). Here, she’s referring to the strawberry milkshake and PBJ sandwich combination that Vanessa shows Joan and Frances, which Frances dubs “the Vanessa.” Amused, Vanessa says, “What a legacy to leave behind” (211). Though this is a small kind of legacy, it stretches beyond this moment. Later, Joan and Frances order the combination for themselves even without Vanessa present, having adopted this tradition as their own to carry forward.
Legacy is an important part of Joan’s journey that binds the themes of Navigating Gender and Sexuality Discrimination and The Relationship Between Ambition and Sacrifice. Joan hopes that her ambition to be an astronaut will create a legacy, paving the way for young girls in the future to aspire to become astronauts. By fighting gender stereotypes and discrimination now, she and the other women of Group 9 will make it easier for girls in future generations. However, this legacy also has the potential for negative impact. For instance, Lydia fears what will happen if Sally Ride, or any of the women in the space program, fail. Lydia knows that any failure, perceived or actual, will alter the course of history for all young girls, saying: “Little girls across the country will be made fun […]. Girls’ understanding of who they can be will be smaller. If this does not go well. Whether we meant to or not, we will have done that to them” (224).
Legacy appears in other ways, such as when Steve tells Vanessa that mentoring her is a proud part of the legacy he’ll leave behind. This statement becomes more poignant when he dies during the shuttle crisis. The novel emphasizes that legacies can be both positive and negative, thus encouraging careful thought about what one leaves behind both intentionally and accidentally.
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