"the chapel" 'Orbital locates the sacred within a godless void.' 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 humanity constructs reverence against the overwhelming emptiness of the cosmos.¹ While the vastness of space initially appears as an isolating exposure to a truly godless universe, the novel simultaneously demonstrates that shared witness and fragile interdependence elevate mortal existence, establishing that true sanctity emerges from human communion rather than divine providence.² Harvey therefore challenges her modern audience to abandon illusions of cosmic centrality, urging contemporary readers to cherish the fragile and imperilled planet upon which such sacred connections depend.³

Harvey initially presents the orbital perspective as a confrontation with a profoundly godless void, yet reveals that shared witness of Earth transmutes such exposure into a collective reverence that distance cannot erode.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 as the isolating sublimity of the void forges an interdependence that steels them against cosmic emptiness. 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 six of their perspectives, their gaze faltering before the overwhelming magnitude of an indifferent universe. Thus, to resist cosmic erasure, readers bear witness to Shaun's "postcard of Las Meninas," reflective of mere bystanders, mirroring their "privileged anxious view" of "mother Earth" and the fragility such distance exposes. In doing so, the ekphrastic image articulates the duality between beauty and burden as her readership alongside the crew experience Earth's Anthropocene transformation while discovering a secular sanctity in their shared vulnerability. This collective steadfastness narrows into intimate mourning when Chie receives the news of her mother's death, exposing human fragility within an indifferent cosmos.⁶ Through Chie's anguished chant "mother mother mother mother"⁷, the narrative captures the introspective weight of individual grief that invites readers to childishly echo the mantra in their own minds. Yet, the station's discernment of the storm's "building magnificence" alongside Pietro's fixation on the "particular fisherman and his family" transforms the typhoon's immensity into a meditation on shared vulnerability, serving as a microcosm of communion sustained in common. Hence, the oxymoronic enchantment of an "unearthly watery light" residing from the typhoon magnifies the "tethers of biological life" as the prose illuminates "the chapel['s]" sanctified nature whereby the collective preservation of kinship transcends the "piddling speck" of existence into a celebration of secular grace. Through this fused watching and mourning, Harvey establishes that sanctity is forged within the fragile communion of humanity. Harvey initially presents the orbital perspective as a confrontation with a profoundly godless void, yet reveals that shared witness of Earth translates such exposure into a collective reverence that distance cannot erode.⁸