Gender roles
While many things changed in society, the role women have did not. They continue to see seen as beings used by men to their own pleasure and inferior to them. This is suggested by the fact that when Floyd landed on the Moon, he was welcomed by a woman dancing. The woman of the women dancing had no other role than to make Floyd’s stay more pleasant and symbolize sexual desire.
Diana
The narrator offers the description of a girl found on the space station on the Moon, someone who was born and raised there. Her appearance is different from the way people looked on earth. Diane is much taller than the normal people and also heavier. These characteristic are seen as being the result of evolution and of living in space and so the description offers a possible image on how the future man and women will look like.
Rock
When Floyd sees the mysterious rock for the first time, he is amazed by how it looks. The image of it made him feel both scared and exited because it represented the unknown, something that man has yet to discover and something that is yet to be explored. Because of this, the image of the rock is important because it represents both the unknown and the possibility of discovering something new and possibly dangerous.
Boring life
When the narrative shifts on the spaceship Discovery, the narrator described the life those who are on it have. Far from being exited and filled with adventures, life in space is mundane, with long periods of just waiting to reach their destination and fixing things that broke along the way. In this sense, the image the novel offers on space travel s far from the glamorous and exiting life many on earth imagined them to have.
