Orbital reveals that routine and repetition can give meaning to human existence.' Discuss.

Written during the confinement of pandemic lockdowns and published in 2023, Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital traces sixteen circuits of an Earth scarred by the Anthropocene, interrogating how mortal observers construct meaning amid the overwhelming vastness of cosmic scale.¹ While the void initially threatens to reduce the astronauts' days to an isolating and disorienting monotony, the novel instead reveals that human repetition and disciplined routine forge a vital continuity that defies transience.² Harvey therefore challenges her modern audience to abandon the illusion of permanence, urging contemporary readers to locate value within the fleeting, cyclical habits that sustain human existence.³

Harvey initially presents the dissolution of terrestrial time as an isolating exposure to human brevity, yet reveals that shared observation of the planet translates this temporal distortion into a collective continuity.⁴ Suspended in liminal space with the collective consciousness "they are so together"⁵ yet "so alone", Harvey's illustration of collectivity coalesces the crew into a unified psychological entity, revealing how the isolating sublimity of the void fortifies the six against temporal dissolution. Centring on the fragmented "trail of gunpowder" reflecting their temporal distortion that projects a "milky cover" obscuring their "siphoning eye", the roving third-person narration drains the crew of perspective, their gaze scattering into the overwhelming magnitude of space's boundless scale. Repelling this cosmic erasure, readers bear witness to Shaun's "postcard of Las Meninas", its bystanders mirroring the astronauts' "privileged anxious view" of "mother Earth", recasting aesthetic observation as a disciplined habit against brevity. Harvey's rendering of this image articulates the duality between beauty and burden, as her readership alongside the six experience the Anthropocene transformation while finding anchor in the repetition of their orbital watch. This temporal distortion narrows into a visceral recognition of transience when Chie's bereavement exposes the fragile brevity of mortal bonds.⁶ Through Chie's anguished chant of "mother mother mother mother"⁷, Harvey captures the introspective weight of private mourning, inviting readers to echo the mantra and revealing how repetition provides a framework to endure loss. Harvey's discernment of the storm's "building magnificence" alongside Pietro's fixation on the "particular fisherman and his family" reshapes the typhoon's scale into a meditation on shared vulnerability, establishing a microcosm of continuity upheld collectively. Hence, the oxymoronic enchantment of an "unearthly watery light" residing from the typhoon magnifies the "tethers of biological life", as the image illuminates "the chapel['s]" sanctified shelter whereby the preservation of kinship transcends the "piddling speck" of mortal scale into a cyclical generational endurance. Through this convergence of temporal displacement and mourning, Harvey establishes that repetition anchors humanity against the void. Harvey initially presents the dissolution of terrestrial time as an isolating exposure to human brevity, yet reveals that shared observation of the planet transmutes this temporal distortion into a collective continuity.⁸