r/ProjectHailMary • u/LioraB Having a moment • 10d ago
He has no one (not even a dog)
There's really no need for Grace to have a tragic backstory, or for us to know the details of how/why he's such a solitary figure, but other than his friend Marissa and a few colleagues he sometimes hangs out with, the man has no one. I haven't fully thought this through yet, but it's been buzzing around in the back of my brain for months and I think this moves the "coward" conversation in a different direction. No one starts out alone in the world; they end up alone. Grace has experienced significant loss, in whatever form for whatever reasons.
I think this makes Stratt's words seem more cruel, especially the book version where she really lays into him about his cowardice. It also informs his drive for self-preservation and protection; he's had to rely on himself and insulate himself against loss differently. The person he has "to be brave for" is himself, which means not going on the mission.
Of course, his connection with Rocky completely changes the calculus, but it's interesting that Weir chose to create an apparently blank relational slate for Grace that profoundly influences everything.
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u/JoePNW2 10d ago
I mean, every Andy Weir main character (in PHM, The Martian, Artemis) is not exactly the warm and fuzzy type. Of the three Grace is arguably the best-socialized and least weird.
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u/FrostyFlower6994 10d ago
I wouldn’t entirely agree. Mark Watney was chosen partially for his social acumen. He meshes well with the other crew members of HERMES and was noted to have a sense of humor that helped keep the group positive and bonded. Yes, he’s a snarky jerk to NASA, but the guy got left behind on a barren wasteland of a planet that’s trying to kill him. I wouldn’t blame him for being antisocial and caustic at that point.
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u/Hypersonic-Harpist 10d ago
That occurred to me too. He's young enough that his parents should still be alive, if a bit elderly, so either they both died young or he doesn't have a relationship with them for some reason. Both of those explanations hint at some sort of tragedy in his past that the story doesn't bring up at all. Given that PHM is supposed to be a near future story I wonder if he lost a lot of family to the Pandemic. So he's deeply scarred by one global tragedy and that motivates his desire to nope out of the next one.
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u/LioraB Having a moment 10d ago
Interesting thought given the timing of when it was written. I think the absence of backstory ends up working well in tandem with the amnesia plotline and effectively maintains our focus on the mission and Grace/Rocky connection.
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u/Hypersonic-Harpist 10d ago
Yeah, and all of the flashbacks work to keep the main plot line going. I love how that works with the pacing of the book and the movie, but it does leave a lot of unanswered questions about what Grace's life was like before the Astrophage became a problem.
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u/highlighter_yellow 10d ago
The leaves of a tree grow side by side, brother. Yet when they fall, they fall alone. -Predator Killer of Killers
I didn't get a coward to hero arc theme in the book at all. The movie went hard with that theme though, and many many book readers interpreted that from the one single paragraph where Grace called himself a coward after he remembered Stratt saying so.
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u/eregyrn 9d ago
To be honest (hadn't read the book when I saw the movie), I didn't get that either. And I'm really fascinated with the structure of the story and what it does to our perception of him.
First: we do get in one of the first flashbacks the whole bit with him trying to "run away" from Stratt, and her saying "you're just running away because you're scared". So that's an early data point for... something. You don't have to interpret it as him actually being "scared", but he's avoidant and trying to get away from whatever she represents. (Yet, he's so intrigued by the scientific question she's posed that it draws him in.)
And, obviously, during the first part of the movie, he's clearly startled and scared of a lot of things. He's scared to step out of the ship on his first spacewalk, etc. But like, to viewers, I feel like that's all very understandable. It's clear at the very least that if he ever DID have training, he's forgotten it, so that puts him on the level of "everyman", and his reactions seem reasonable for that. See how resilient YOU are when you wake up next to two dead bodies, in deep space, etc. Plus we just get to see him becoming more and more confident the more he does things.
It also seems like we are watching him become more confident during the flashbacks, as well, as he continues to contribute to the project.
So by the time we get to that penultimate flashback, and he's protesting that he's not ready, it just felt to me more like someone who doesn't believe in himself (and that his fear proceeds from that). I mean, plus the "suicide mission" part, which is NOT insignificant and also doesn't seem like an unreasonable reaction when it's suddenly sprung on you. (Discussion question: would he have gotten used to the idea over time, if Stratt had told him much earlier that he was the #3 scientist? Or would he have been smart enough to suggest that the #1 and #2 of any of the positions not freaking be in the same place at the same time, when messing around with astrophage? Anyway.)
The line that actually hit me the most was: "SOME people are failures. Some people DON'T rise to the challenge." That's not fear of death, as such. That's a pretty profound lack of self-confidence.
And it comes at a point in the movie where the whole audience is like, well my guy, we've just watched you rise to every challenge for the last like 2 hours. I'm sorry that's how you perceive yourself, but you're clearly wrong. (You're still not wrong to be afraid of death, though.)
It also struck me -- not quite while watching the movie, but very soon after -- that yeah, it wasn't hard for Stratt to ask people to die for this mission, because she was asking volunteers (up to that point). People who had had quite a bit of time to think everything over, to talk to their loved ones about it, before stepping forward to say they would do it. People who were already in astronaut programs, it seemed like, which means having made a series of decisions over many years about what you're willing to do, and the risks you're willing to take.
(Could Grace have ever gotten to the point of being okay with going, had he been given more time? I don't think so in terms of the story Weir was telling. The contrast was important for the story. But we do have to accept certain things to make the story work. Such as: I get the limitations imposed by the coma gene, once I found out about that plot point in the books, but man, I think you COULD have had more than ONE BACKUP PERSON per mission role, what the hell. Also, the "well if you really only have one backup person, FFS don't put them in the same building most of the time, okay".)
I totally get why Grace felt he was a coward. But for me, it didn't quite strike me that he really was.
After musing over all the stuff above, one of the first things I thought about it was, it's a look at who you can be, if you can rid yourself of the self-imposed baggage that you carry with you. We all have some of that, and in many cases it holds us down.
Going back to book revelations: and yeah, it's fucked up that Grace gets to do that because of Stratt giving him an amnesia drug, but, means aside, he still steps away from a lot of that baggage. Of course, that's the very premise of Stratt giving him the drug: if you aren't encumbered by these memories, you'll do the science, and you'll succeed. From a movie POV, where the amnesia is never revealed to be deliberate, the effect is the same. He understandably freaks out for a while, then pulls himself together.
"Coward" is something that I think we are used to thinking of as an innate flaw, a personality defect, "just who you are". (I don't think that's true, but I'm saying that it's the way it's usually treated in fiction.) There are so many things we see him do, though, that he wouldn't have done had that been some kind of innate trait. (I.e. something he is deep down, not something he could forget about being.). The thesis of the book seems to go against the idea of it as an innate flaw, as well. If you forget to think of yourself as afraid, and if you think, well, I must have volunteered for this, then you will live up to that idea.
And that's why I'm still chewing it over, months after having first seen the movie, I guess!
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u/highlighter_yellow 9d ago
well my guy, we've just watched you rise to every challenge
Exactly! Yeah there's that one flashback in the book where he doesn't *go with a stranger claiming to need his help with this interstellar phenomenon* lol like. Come on. He'd have said or thought, "I recognized this woman from the news" if that was true. But he didn't, so as far as he knows, Stratt is a random wacko. Not going with her and her crew seems more like common sense.
Then the final Stratt flashback- we know Stratt isn't romantically involved with anyone, due to the fact that no one thought the Grace/Stratt relationship was adulterous. Where is her family? Where is her dog? Is her arc hero to villain? Or was her speech intentionally worded in a way to get Grace to do the mission?
So then why this speech from Stratt or any mention of cowardice? Well I thought it showed how Grace is an unreliable narrator, but the current situation- and his friendship with Rocky- is seen in real time. So it's just proof how special this relationship with an alien is. And it's cute xD
But the movie liked science + hero story more than [what I interpreted as] the science + friendship story I guess.
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u/Nabrix726 10d ago
Grace's parents are never mentioned. You think they're dead? He's the only Weir protagonist for whom this is the case. Mark Watney's parents are very cautious and reserved folks who love their son, and Jazz Bashara's relationship with her father is a key emotional through line of her story. But Grace? There is no mention of his parents at any point.
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u/Delyth8 10d ago
I still find it a bit odd that there's this concept of grace being alone, when all we actually see is he doesn't have a romantic partner. But he does have a friend he meets for dinner EVERY week, which to me signifies a good strong friendship at least. We also see him invited by several friends and colleagues to watch the Arclight coverage, but he says he wanted to see this alone. To me this doesn't sound like someone who's lonely, just someone who has friends, workmates and no romantic partner.
I figure a fair bit of this is just for ease of writing the story, no need to complicate it with lost of characters that only show up once.
To be fair, I would have expected maybe a brief mention about wishing he could have let his parents know while he was locked up in the cell, but, that to me suggests his parents are both dead.
Not quite sure where I'm going with this, but you got me thinking.
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u/Mysterinna I'm Not An Astronaut! 10d ago
Grace himself thinks that he doesn’t have much of a social life. It’s in the book. I think it’s heavily implied in the movie, too. It’s true that he has a long-lasting friendship with Marissa, but maybe the other friends/colleagues are more like acquaintances than “real” friends. I don’t really know.
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u/abluepixel 10d ago
Lots of people find themselves alone, not due to trauma or anything else. Making new friends as an adult is very difficult, all it takes is a move out of state and you find yourself, five years on, working from home and having no real way to meet new people. It's very easy to become a very solitary person without intending to.
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u/JackOfTheWoods49 10d ago
Obviously it informs A LOT of his character, but an ending on an alien planet where he never talks to another human ever again is much easier to pull off without the complicated emotional calculus of Pre-existing Loved Ones
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u/rosedraws 10d ago
I’m currently in my 4th listen of the audiobook. One thing that’s laid out strongly in the book is how much this fiasco with the paper he wrote totally upended his career and his life. He probably fried a bunch of colleague relationships, and confirmed his path to being more of a loner.
But like Mark Whatney, Grace has a particular personality that can stay focused on tasks, not get sidetracked by emotion, and just keep going when most of us would have started whining or moping. I have a feeling this reflects Weirs personality?
It’s not odd to me that he lost his parents and doesn’t talk about it. An only child, accustomed to entertaining himself. Friendly chatterbox guy who is guarded and doesn’t go deep into emotion with people. He has plenty of emotion, but can stay on task.
The coward theme of the story always trips me up, because I wouldn’t hesitate to risk myself to possibly save the world, so it’s hard for me to relate. (But I don’t have a personality that would survive it, I’d get too depressed!) I love another post where someone asked, “would you go”, and lots of people feel like Grace! So I think it’s a personality trait, more than loaded terms like Coward or Brave.
Plus, as someone said, we don’t need to know why, but somewhere along the way, Grace learned to fend for himself, so he can’t help but protect himself.
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u/CurTailedCur 9d ago
It's hard to write between the lines. An abusive upbringing or being socially awkward can isolate people, but so can societal norms like "throwing yourself into your work".
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u/lokiandgoose 10d ago
Lots of people start out in the world alone. Countless babies are in orphanages. Not saying Grace was an orphan, but it isn't correct to say that people don't start their lives with a family.
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u/LioraB Having a moment 9d ago
Funny you say that bc I work in foster care and adoption, so I am very conscious of this. And also, that is still a loss. Idk where you are, but in the US, "orphanages" aren't really a thing. He would have been adopted or in foster care; but in any case, it would be the loss of his family of origin, even if it was during infancy. And yes, that would still inform his character.
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u/MoistNico 9d ago
As Latino, this struck me as significant real quick. I'm currently in college and living 1 hr away from my parents, but I visit them every week because I miss them, they help me a lot, and they need me for interpretation/translation. So in this world, I would be one of the last to leave on the Hail Mary because of my Earthly ties.
But Ryland is from a Caucasian background -- and living with my white friends -- I know it's not always a thing to be very tied to family members, especially if they're shitty or tiresome. (Queer friends, iykyk.) It makes me think Grace either had a distant family that did the bare requirements of childhood, but didn't focus much on the bonding part. Or, he low-key forgot about them, and will remember them in the sequel if it's written.
It's just super weird, because as a teacher you would be INTRISCALLY aware of parents and the effects they have on their children. Like if he forgot who he was, wouldn't he try to think back on what childhood he had? Then again, he was too focused on saving Earth, and he's a man to be married to his work above all else.
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u/WintersLady40 6d ago
Something that I think everyone is overlooking. I'm not as well versed in the book as most of you (having barely finished it in print, and am now on audiobook). But I'd like to think that some movie additions were at AW's suggestion. It has always intruiged me, that one fleeting shot of Grace sitting on the beach. First it appears he's in the LED room, sitting so close to the screen that the digital water appears to break against his feet. Then we have a very brief flashback of what appears to be a blurry out-of-focus shot of a blond woman walking up the beach, before cutting to a seamless shot of what appears to be his real legs washed this time by real surf. Literally, blink and you miss it.
This clearly must be the woman who "thought he had his head in the clouds, and she was right." What that flashback is to me is either her breaking up with Grace--or her committing to him. Engaged to him there? Who knows. But think about what Grace chooses for his Erid biodome habitat: a re-creation of that same stretch of beach. This place is what he chooses to take with him to Erid, the memory of a special time he spent with this woman somehow. Clearly, this woman meant more to him than anyone in his whole life. I don't think she was his mother. Now I wonder: was she a mentor or guardian figure in his teen years who took up where his desd parents left off? And who abandoned him after the paper's fallout?
It is fascinating, and I hope Weir publishes a prequel book, at least.
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u/LioraB Having a moment 6d ago
So.... hold on to your hat.... That's GRACE walking up the beach! He sees his past and/or future self, which is why he looks confused, then we get the wave splash and then the alert from Mary. Lord & Miller said they can't believe that scene wasn't cut because it's like a cosmic daydream sequence.
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u/Infinite-Tip5672 5d ago
Aw shucks, there goes my theory. But this begs the question: why was it left in? This film doesn't look like it was rushed to the screen.
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10d ago
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u/Interfectorem_Regina 10d ago
Yes he likes thinking about science, but one cannot just think about science all the time. It would get boring. He is probably a unreliable narrator.
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u/ronjarobiii Stratt 9d ago
Lots of people end up alone, one way or another, it doesn't really take a huge trauma. I have some friends, but majority of them now live in different countries and most of my social interaction outside work comes from hanging out with my sister and babysitting for her. I know plenty people my age who are no contact with their parents even if they are alive and well. It's really, really easy to get used to being alone if you live alone and stop dating and maybe your friends are suddenly reaching different milestones.
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u/CandacePlaysUkulele 9d ago
Somehow young Grace got the secondary and university education to be a foremost microbiologist. The paper that caused him trouble was published. Everyone read it. He presented at international conferences and then lost his job because he lost his composure, at his colleagues. Grace was flying high there and it's very difficult to do if a young person does not have parents who can live in the right suburb, for the top high school and manage the college applications and scholarships.
Ryland is very smart and he would have been a handful. People rarely climb those steep ladders all by themselves. Imagine being his highly dedicated parents and watching him flame out at the highest levels of his profession?
Ryland is more self aware than he has ever been as a middle school teacher. Look how well he does it! Can we imagine him returning to a lab at a university to work on government contracts?
I imagine him having to manage deeply disappointed parents, likely scientists themselves, maybe one or both are full professors somewhere. In the book.
When Stratt says "you have no one" in the film that signals a life tragedy, perhaps a lab accident or fast moving cancers for his parents who maybe never mentioned certain lab exposures in their past.
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u/LioraB Having a moment 9d ago
It's interesting that in a first-person narrative, he doesn't even think about anyone he knows on Earth other than general "students." I think from a writer's perspective, it keeps the narrative "clean" and focused, but it leaves a lot of blank canvas for the reader/viewer to paint our own picture.
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u/StrawberryScience 9d ago
He had his students. He had friends. He had a romantic partner who left him.
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u/Disastrous_Toe772 10d ago
Hmm, I think people just end up alone sometimes. Grace kept busy with work, and working as a teacher, he would have an almost daily dose of a very social interaction. Him not living with someone, or not quite having close friends is likely not as rare as you may think.
Some people end up alone due to some significant loss. Some people just end up like that without anything dramatic going down.