A Rover's Story

The relationship between Guardian, Resilience, and Fly makes great strides in these chapters, laying further foundation for the exploration of Grief and Loss as Part of Life to come. Guardian begins the section still feeling superior, issuing orders for Resilience and Fly and reprimanding Fly for his antics. As the section progresses, though, Guardian starts to soften, most prominently during the dust storm. Finding Courage in a permanently offline state is foreshadowed in Chapter 59 when Guardian says rovers aren’t meant to last; Resilience’s decision not to focus on those words or the emotions they invoke hint at the feat and discomfort humans experience when confronted with their own mortality. Instead, Resilience chooses to focus on his journey toward Courage and how time is passing. This reaction aligns with Sophie’s letters in the next few chapters. Rania falls ill, and her illness takes a toll on Sophie, forcing her daughter to wrestle with new and frightening feelings. By Balancing Emotion and Logic, Sophie can understand that Resilience isn’t at fault for her mother’s choices, but even after having thought through her feelings, she remains shaken.

“Zappedty zip” is the first time Resilience creates a phrase all his own, and it is one of the things that reminds him of Journey in a positive way. Ever since Journey coined “beeps and boops,” Resilience has been amazed and a bit jealous that Journey made something uniquely her own, and Resilience has wanted to do the same. His ability to do so here relates to the motifs of language and music as mechanisms by which we can parse through or express difficult emotions. The unique combination of Guardian’s attitude and Fly’s nerves over flying for the first time creates a layered set of emotions that Resilience finds a way to express in his own unique manner.

Corresponding with Sophie’s period of tumultuous social and emotional development, Part 4 captures Resilience’s efforts to build his own team and confront more mature and nuanced feelings. Resilience stays true to his mission to bring Courage back online, tracking his progress through the distance he travels. In this section, Guardian initially continues to behave like an overbearing boss, nitpicking Resilience’s every action. Resilience resists letting this behavior tear down his confidence by remarking simply that he’s doing his best. This response offers something of an answer to Sophie’s predicament, as she struggles to build new friendships herself.

Resilience being stuck in Chapters 61 through 63 calls to the theme of The Pursuit of Knowledge and grief and loss as part of life. Regarding the first theme, Resilience being physically stuck represents getting stumped—those periods of time in an effort to learn something new where we cannot quite take the necessary next step. With patience, though, and the assistance of teammates, we can overcome such challenges. The sense of fear and helplessness that Resilience experiences, in turn, foreshadows his coming encounter with the undeniability of his own mortality. Misfortune is not necessarily deserved. As Resilience wondered earlier of Courage, “I can’t help but wonder if the other rover made a poor choice and that’s why he ended up in the dust storm or if he just didn’t have enough information” (68). There is sometimes no reason or explanation for it, something that Resilience has now experienced firsthand.