Landscape with Invisible Hand

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-17

Chapters 18-22

Chapters 23-26

Chapters 27-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Nattie’s Stuffed Animals

In Chapter 23, “Stuffed Animals in a Line,” Nattie organizes and sells her stuffed animals to get money for her family. The stuffed animals represent Nattie’s childhood, and her selling them symbolizes the loss of childhood. Nattie loses her childhood as a result of the vuvv invasion and its subsequent effects. Her father left, her mother can’t find work despite searching relentlessly, and her brother recently lost his source of income and has yet to secure another. Nattie demonstrates self-sacrifice, which isn’t typical for children. She has been forced to mature faster than is ideal. Her parting with her childhood at an early age reflects how children who live in capitalist-driven poverty often don’t experience a full childhood—something that should be a right, not a privilege.

Translators

Humans and vuvv communicate by using translator boxes. The translators symbolize the differences—both biological and social—between the vuvv and humans. The biological forms of humans and the vuvv differ significantly. The vuvv are described as resembling “granite coffee tables” (6), and they communicate with each other by using a fin that they rub against their bodies to make staticky grinding sounds similar to sandpaper or Velcro. Translator devices are used in all human-vuvv interactions in the novel, demonstrating that interspecies physical differences are significant enough that communication relies on these devices.

Additionally, the use of the translators demonstrates the social hierarchy between the two species because the vuvv refuse to wear them:

[T]hey say it’s up to us to speak their language, if we want to do business with them. They can’t be expected to learn the languages of all the different species they deal with, babbling across the galaxy, some of them speaking in smells or patterned light (75).

The vuvv refusal to wear translators extends beyond their relationship with humans. They’re conquerors who consider themselves superior to other species because their technology is more advanced. Their entitlement criticizes real-world assumptions of cultural superiority and Western standard-of-living measurements.

Merrick’s Disease

Adam and many other poverty-bound humans in the novel have Merrick’s Disease, a condition that affects the digestive system, causing pain, gas, diarrhea, and ulcers. Like many, Adam contracted the disease from tap water because “as part of the vuvv’s austerity measures, municipal water is no longer purified” (40). The humans who must consume municipal water are no longer entitled to safe drinking water. This depiction criticizes the commodification of clean water and the high levels of contaminants in drinking water in real-world communities. Thus, the disease is a motif in the novel that represents the oppression resulting from capitalism and the extreme wealth gap between humans living on Earth’s surface and the vuvv and humans living in floating vuvv buildings in the atmosphere.

The disease further symbolizes oppression through the lack of access to medical care. The vuvv have a simple cure for the disease, but since Adam’s family can’t afford advanced medical insurance or pay for the treatment outright, he must bear the symptoms. This intentionally satirizes the privatization and commodification of medical and insurance systems in the US.

Additionally, Adam’s battle with the disease symbolizes the oppression he faces because it worsens when his circumstances become more dire and thus more stressful. For example, his symptoms intensify when he loses his income from the dating show and the vuvv threaten a lawsuit, when his relationship with Chloe ends after she rejects him in favor of Buddy, and when he’s participating in a potentially life-altering art contest. In the last instance, Adam develops intestinal ulcers that rupture and flood his body with fecal matter, causing a septic infection. The advancement of the disease represents the severity of Adam’s circumstances and symbolizes how poverty can become a life-and-death issue.