Solaris

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Character Analysis

Themes

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Important Quotes

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Themes

The Limitations of Human Intellect

While Solaris does not take place in a specific time period, Lem quickly reveals it is a story about space exploration in a distant future. Humans’ inability to understand the cosmos is core to both the human characters and their visitors. Solaris is described as a planet circling a binary star formation. Because scientists determined life could not exist on such a planet, Solaris was initially deemed uninteresting. Then researchers stumbled upon an anomaly: According to known science, the planet’s orbit should move it closer to its red sun, but Solaris refused. This led scientists to question if the planet itself made this decision. They traveled to Solaris, studying it and trying to evoke a response. While the planet’s ocean, with its ability to create mimoids (small constructs and visitors) and symmetriads (structures), seemed capable of mimicking human activity, scientists could never prove it was alive. However, it is later revealed that several records detailing mimoids and symmetriads were disregarded as evidence by authorities—simply because they didn’t adhere to specific standards.

Before Kris’s arrival at the space station, Dr. Snow, Dr. Sartorius, and Dr. Gibarian decided to conduct an unauthorized experiment, irradiating Solaris’s ocean with X-rays. For the first time, the ocean responded in a direct manner—sending visitors to the scientists, each linked to unfinished business. When Kris arrives, the scientists’ purpose changes from determining the ocean’s sentience to its potential message (via the visitors). However, Gibarian is already deceased at this point, and Snow and Sartorius are too preoccupied with their respective visitors to fulfill the purpose of their study. It is implied that Snow and Sartorius kill their visitors, unwilling to treat them with empathy or engage with their lessons. Lem leaves these questions unanswered because his novel’s message is that humans are not capable of answering them—partially due to their emotions. To him, humans can only view and understand the cosmos through human eyes, limited by their own egotism. Thus, anthropomorphizing the ocean and assigning meaning to its visitors play into this egotism. Overall, Lem expresses the idea that human insight is limited because of the very nature of humanity.

Outer Space Versus Inner Space

While Lem does not answer the question as to why Solaris’s ocean sends visitors, he does delve into the scientists’ relationships with their visitors. Each of these visitors emerges from the scientists’ unfinished business. However, neither Dr. Snow, Dr. Sartorius, nor Dr. Gibarian indicates who is haunting them—with only their fear and frustration hinting at their past relationships. The only named visitor in the novel is Rheya, a replication of Kris’s deceased wife. Like the other visitors, this Rheya initially believes she is the original Rheya, voicing confusion as to why she is suddenly at the space station. Kris studies her arm and sees the red mark left by the hypodermic needle she used to end her life. Thus, he deduces the ocean sent a hypothetical version of Rheya, one who didn’t die from her overdose. Her presence reignites his guilt, as a past argument is what inadvertently led to her death. As per the nature of visitors, Rheya is a harbinger of Kris’s greatest regret, the same being implied for the other scientists—with Gibarian ending his life over his own visitor. On the other hand, it is implied that Snow and Sartorius continually kill their visitors.

Despite being charged with studying Solaris, none of the scientists chooses to address their visitors’ core issues. For example, Kris does not sit Rheya down, explain how she died, and express his remorse. Rather, he deceives her, pretending they are where they are supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to be doing. With time, their intimacy grows, primarily because Rheya pieces together Kris’s disparate behavior and comments. Due to his dishonesty, she becomes convinced that her presences is a threat to him. As for Kris himself, he avoids discussing the original Rheya as he has grown attached to this version of her. When she drugs him so she can die by assisted suicide in peace, Kris is left alone again. Through his novel, Lem posits the irony of humans acquiring the ability to traverse space but being unable to reconcile with their emotions and personal conflicts.

Humanity as a Saving Grace

As a prophetic narrative, Solaris criticizes humankind, insisting the species will always be limited by its inability to view the cosmos without anthropomorphizing it. However, Lem also illustrates the redemptive power of humanity and empathy in the face of uncertainty and suggests that the best response to mankind’s failures and limitations is for human beings to express and share their humanity. Lem gives examples of this principle at various junctures in the narrative. For example, when Berton, a helicopter pilot mentioned in Dr. Gibarian’s copy of The Little Apocrypha, relays his sighting of a humanlike symmetriad (an image of a baby created by Solaris’s living ocean) to a review council, three council members claim he was hallucinating. He doesn’t elaborate on the symmetriad, refusing to subject his humanity to arbitrary judgment.

Another moment of shared humanity comes when the deceased Gibarian visits Kris in a dream to warn him of the more ruthless Dr. Snow and Dr. Sartorius. Kris realizes this version of his mentor has been sent by the ocean, either in a dream or at least momentarily as a visitor, meaning that Kris’s greatest experiences of humanity in the station come not from the other human beings but from visitors from the ocean.

As Kris and Rheya grow close, his empathy for the visitor grows as well. Ironically, the novel’s greatest expression of humanity is Rheya herself, as the visitor learns to exist apart from Kris, to confront him when he deceives her, and ultimately die on her own terms. In a final act of humanity, she leaves a suicide note explaining her decision to “free” him and begging for forgiveness. Ultimately, it is Kris’s expression of humanity that undoes Gibarian and Sartorius’s experiment, which elicited the visitors in the first place. Twice, Kris projects his thoughts into the ocean through Sartorius’s device. After the second broadcast, the ocean stops sending visitors, this request overpowering Kris’s love for Rheya. In the final scene, he goes to the ocean, hoping it might return her to him. Overall, Lem suggests that in the face of failures wrought by ambition and hubris, redemption comes from embodying and expressing vulnerability.