66 pages • 2 hours read
Jasmine WargaA Rover's Story
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaSymbols & Motifs
Sophie’s Letters
Resilience’s journey is one of self-discovery and understanding the human experience. From a practical standpoint, Sophie’s letters offer context as to how Resilience’s physical journey is viewed on Earth during his mission. As a motif, however, Sophie’s letters present the parallel journey of a preteen girl. The letters thereby, at once, powerfully humanize the rover while also emphasizing the intensity of coming of age, aligning that experience with the experience of going to Mars and back.
From her first letter, Sophie acknowledges that she is struggling with mixed feelings, especially toward Resilience and her mother. She is frustrated that the rover takes so much of her mother’s time and attention. However, much as Resilience learns to do with his new emotions, Sophie works through her complicated feelings with critical thinking: “Sometimes I get mad at you. But the real truth, which is hard to say, is that I’m kind of mad at Mom. Even though I’m proud of her, too” (39). Her letters often portray such examples of Balancing Emotion and Logic, often mirroring Resilience’s own progress within this theme. One of the most poignant instances comes as Sophie’s letters detail the return of her mother’s illness as Resilience grapples with the implications of Courage’s blankness. Sophie’s more familiar journey helps ground Resilience’s science fiction existential crisis, emphasizing the pain of coming to accept Grief and Loss as Part of Life.
Sophie’s letters also call attention to the universality of the human experience despite our imperfect understanding of other people’s emotional journeys. The letters, by nature, indicate a certain distance between Sophie and Resilience. That distance only grows more dramatic as Resilience departs for Mars. Resilience is unable to communicate with Sophie, or with any of the humans for that matter. Nonetheless, Sophie’s letters show her developing a deep emotional connection with the rover, and Resilience’s experiences ultimately lead him back home to Sophie.
Mars
Mars is an important symbol of the unknown throughout the novel. The planet is the setting for the latter portion of the book, and even when Resilience isn’t on the planet, his existence is defined by his Mars mission. Prior to leaving for Mars, Resilience’s days are spent doing tests and learning all he can about what the journey and destination will be like. His time in the lab is full of anticipation and anxiety over what to expect and his desire to live up to what’s expected of him. Once he arrives on Mars, The Pursuit of Knowledge is situated within a vast and unknown—and sometimes dangerous—landscape. Though the scientists are monitoring Resilience and offering guidance, the choices are his alone to make, which makes Mars his proving grounds. It is here that Resilience achieves the most growth in terms of balancing emotion and logic.
The different reactions that Mars elicits are representative of major milestones in both coming of age and the pursuit of knowledge. There is a sense of wonder and awe. When Resilience first arrives on Mars, he is amazed; he takes pictures and audio samples, overcome by an urge to experience it all at once. Mars also elicits a sense of isolation and highlights the importance of companionship. Resilience is keenly aware of just how far from home he is, especially on spotting the pinprick of Earth in the sky, but he is comforted by having Fly and Guardian with him. The dust storms that Resilience encounters teach him about unexpected hardship and how to cope with fear. The mystery sound proves a perpetual mystery, even through to the end of the novel. His journey across Mars, taken together, metaphorically captures many of the big emotions and challenges that all humans encounter as they grow up and undertake major goals in life. In turn, Resilience demonstrates the importance of resilience, that is, the value of pushing through adversity and showing determination even when the odds are stacked against success.
Language and Music
The motifs of language and music work together throughout the novel to demonstrate the importance of connection, expression, and curiosity. As tools for expressing feelings, regarding the theme of balancing emotion and logic, these motifs also often tease out the profound value of emotion. Simultaneously, they serve as pathways for processing emotions that may seem at first too big to handle, which is often the case when forced to accept grief and loss as part of life.
Language, even beyond its basic communicative function, is a way of manifesting human emotions. Resilience cannot speak to the scientists. He only meets Sophie twice in person, and when he does, she addresses him only briefly. Nonetheless, the novel is greatly concerned with connection and teamwork. In building meaningful connections with his fellow robots, Resilience relies on his innate ability to understand machine language. However, Resilience also develops a deep connection to the humans around him through merely observing their use of language. Humans’ tones are often indicative of their range of emotions—Rania’s tone changes, for example, depending on who she’s speaking to on the phone. Humans give names and especially nicknames to indicate that they care for another person. Exclamations help capture excitement and joy, which in turn evoke feelings in others, such as how Xander’s “wow” does for Resilience.
Language and music are also expressions of creativity, which is integral to the pursuit of knowledge, as creativity and curiosity are closely related. Resilience uses both language and music to advance his own knowledge. At the beginning of the book, he is content to find meaning in the words Xander and Rania use; it isn’t until Journey creates the expression “beeps and boops” that Resilience realizes he has the power to create as well as learn and mimic. When he coins the phrase “zappedty zip” on Mars, he is both exercising his creative abilities and staking claim to his humanity. Fly similarly begins to compose his own song as they progress.
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