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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Orbiting Jupiter, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Parenthood
Adolescence and Responsibility
Prejudice
Trauma and Trust
Friendship and Love
Summary
Analysis
In Joseph’s story, he meets Madeleine when they are both 13. Mr. Brook, a plumber, works on Madeleine’s fancy house, and he makes Joseph carry his tools. Madeleine is there, but her lawyer parents are rarely home. Two days later, Joseph walks seven miles to Madeleine’s house and hangs out with her. After that, he comes every summer day except Saturdays and Sundays, when her parents are home. He never says—and she never asks—why his face is bruised: his father beats him for not helping with the plumbing anymore.
While Joseph’s father is working-class and Madeleine’s parents are implicitly very wealthy, none of them are good parents: Mr. Brook is abusive, beating Joseph for not working, while Madeleine’s parents neglect her, leaving her alone almost continuously during the work week. Madeleine’s bad parents illustrate that abusive or neglectful parenting is not a working-class phenomenon: rich people can parent badly too.
Themes
In autumn, Madeleine goes to Andover for boarding school. Joseph emails her every day from a library computer. When she comes home for Thanksgiving, Joseph walks to see her the day after, but the nanny turns him away at the door, telling him to avoid trouble.
Madeleine attends boarding school, another detail that emphasizes both her parents’ wealth and their lack of interest in spending time with her.
Themes
When Madeleine comes home for Christmas, Joseph walks to her house. She answers the door and ushers him in. They walk in the huge backyard, holding hands. They have a snowball fight, but Joseph misses her on purpose because he loves her. Past the huge backyard, they stroll along a frozen river. Madeleine “skates” in her boots until nightfall. When it’s dark, Joseph points out Jupiter and says it’s his “favorite planet.” Madeleine declares it her favorite now, too.
Readers know that 13-year-olds Madeleine and Joseph are going to have a baby. This scene, in which they have a snowball fight, skate in their shoes, and decide to share a “favorite planet,” emphasizes both their real affection for one another and their childishness—their lack of preparedness to be parents.
Themes
Joseph walks to Madeleine’s house every day of her Christmas break except weekends. On her final day of break, it’s sleeting. When he arrives, she makes him remove his clothing and then wraps him in a red woolen blanket. She asks about his memories of his mother, and he describes how they used to eat snow with maple syrup. Later, Joseph and Madeleine take some maple syrup outside, find snow, and feed each other syrup-and-snow. Madeleine kisses Joseph for the first time. They go inside and get “under the red woolen blanket.”
When Madeleine makes Joseph strip and get under a blanket, it recalls Mrs. Hurd making Jack and Joseph strip and wrap themselves in blankets after Joseph falls through the ice. Together with the implication that Joseph’s mother died when he was young, the parallel between Mrs. Hurd’s behavior and Madeleine’s implies that Joseph falls in love with Madeleine because she offers him affection he hasn’t received from his parents, due to his mother’s death and his father’s abusiveness. In parallel, Madeleine may love Joseph because he shows her attention and affection that she doesn’t receive from her neglectful parents. This confused love, both familial and romantic, leads to them getting “under the red woolen blanket” together, a euphemism for them having sex for the first time.
Themes
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The nanny finds Madeleine and Joseph. Soon after, Madeleine’s parents fire the nanny and take out an injunction against Joseph that forbids him from contacting Madeleine. Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) starts doing home visits with Joseph and Mr. Brook. Madeleine’s parents pull her from Andover and send her to a school in Pennsylvania. Three months later, Mrs. Stroud, who works for the DHSS, visits Mr. Brook during school hours. She tells him that Madeleine is pregnant and says that DHHS will take Joseph to a juvenile facility. When she tells Joseph’s father that Joseph might be charged with a crime, his father says it “wouldn’t be the first time.”
Madeleine’s parents blame Madeleine’s nanny for the unsupervised time that 13-year-old Madeleine has spent unsupervised with Joseph, which has led to the two young adolescents having sex. Moreover, they want to hold Joseph criminally responsible for Madeleine’s pregnancy, even though he and Madeleine are both 13: he is not more responsible than she is for their decision to have sex, and neither is old enough to be help criminally responsible for their actions—morally, if not legally. Their punitive and legalistic reactions show their failure to take adult responsibility for neglecting Madeleine. Similarly, Mr. Brook’s cavalier reaction to Joseph being charged with a crime—claiming that it “wouldn’t be the first time”—shows his irresponsibility and indifference to his son’s future.
Themes
When Joseph gets home, Mrs. Stroud tells him about Madeleine. Joseph is shocked that he’ll be a parent. He wants to be with Madeleine and the baby far away from Mr. Brook, and he wonders whether Madeleine’s parents will help them move away from Maine. When Mrs. Stroud drives him away, he asks her if this can happen. She replies that Joseph isn’t allowed to see Madeleine and that he, a 13-year-old boy, should stop thinking about her. When Joseph protests that he’s going to be a parent, Mrs. Stroud repeats that he’s 13.
Mrs. Stroud argues that because Joseph is 13, too young to be responsible for a baby, he should stop thinking about his baby or the mother of his child. When Joseph protests that he’s going to be a father, it suggests that he will continue to love and think about Madeleine and their baby whether or not he can be responsible for them. Even people incapable of adult responsibility can be loving parents—even if they can’t be good full-time parents.
Themes
Joseph runs away from the group home and goes to Madeleine’s. Madeleine’s mother calls the police. Joseph tells the police that he wanted to explain to Madeleine’s parents that he loves her and is determined to care for their baby. A policeman asks his age. When Joseph tells him, the policeman says Joseph’s “a baby.” Then he returns Joseph to the group home.
Like Mrs. Stroud, the policeman correctly notes that Joseph is a child—hyperbolically, “a baby”—too young to take responsibility for an infant. Yet Joseph still cares very much about Madeleine and their baby. The system’s inability to take Joseph’s real care for his baby into account suggests that institutions don’t know what to do with parents who love their children but aren’t ready to take full responsibility for them.
Themes
Joseph runs away and tries hitchhiking to Pennsylvania. The police find him and take him to Lake Adams Juvenile, a facility with doors that lock from the outside. A couple months later, Mrs. Stroud visits and asks that Joseph sign away his parental rights—revealing to him that Madeleine has had the baby. Examining the papers, he learns that his baby is named Jupiter. He cries. Mrs. Stroud gives him a photo of Jupiter even though she’s not supposed to.
The police take Joseph to a higher-security facility because he keeps running away—this time, to try to see pregnant Madeleine, who has been sent to boarding school somewhere in Pennsylvania. This punitive reaction to Joseph’s desperate desire to be involved with his new family again emphasizes that the law doesn’t know how to deal with loving biological parents who aren’t able to take full responsibility for their children. Meanwhile, when Mrs. Stroud gives Joseph a photo of Jupiter, it shows her humane emotional response to Joseph’s desperation despite her occasionally prejudiced attitude toward him as a child involved in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.
Themes
Mrs. Stroud urges Joseph to sign away his parental rights so that a loving family can adopt Jupiter. Joseph insists that he wants to raise Jupiter. Mrs. Stroud points out that he just turned 14. When Joseph insists that he and Madeleine are the best parents for Jupiter, Mrs. Stroud explains that if he doesn’t sign the paper, Madeleine’s parents will press charges. Joseph frantically interrupts Mrs. Stroud, but he has already realized that Madeleine has died. When Mrs. Stroud tells him that Madeleine would want him to sign the papers, he signs and flees.
Joseph’s insistence that he and Madeleine would make good parents for Jupiter suggests that he doesn’t know how immature or powerless he really is—but also shows how much he cares about his family. Madeleine dies (likely in childbirth)—a trauma for Joseph that helps explain his explosively violent reaction to Jay Perkins’ insulting her and his habit of calling out her name in his sleep.
Themes
Joseph, overwhelmed, runs into the boys’ bathroom and throws water on his face. Another boy walks in, sees Joseph’s distress, and offers him pills. Joseph swallows them and staggers into a stall. A teacher finds him. When Joseph is arrested, he is told that he tried to kill the teacher. After that, he is sent to Stone Mountain. He tries to run away, but the razor wire fence cuts him open from armpit to knee when he climbs over it.
Here, readers learn that Joseph took drugs in a moment of extreme emotional upheaval and that he doesn’t even remember attacking a teacher—revelations emphasizing Joseph’s compromised agency and thus diminished moral responsibility for his violent outburst. These revelations suggest that adults like Mr. Canton may be prejudiced against children like Joseph in part because they don’t know or understand the traumatic context from which their most troubling actions arose.
Themes
When Mrs. Stroud visits Joseph at Stone Mountain, she asks where he was trying to escape to. Joseph asks her what she thinks, insinuating that he was trying to see Jupiter. When she insists that a 14-year-old boy can’t be a father, Joseph replies that he is Jupiter’s father no matter what. Joseph stops talking to Mrs. Stroud or anyone else, even after boys at Stone Mountain beat him up three times, the third time holding him down and doing something to him. After this incident, Mrs. Stroud says that she’ll try to place him with some excellent foster parents on a farm.
Mrs. Stroud’s insistence that Joseph can’t be a father and Joseph’s insistence that he is a father yet again point out a troubling truth: a person can lack the maturity to take care of a child while still being a) biologically capable of having children and b) emotionally capable of loving their children. The account of Joseph’s time at Stone Mountain, in which Joseph explains that the other boys held him down and hid something (but not what), implies that Joseph was not only repeatedly beaten but at one point sexually assaulted—further emphasizing how traumatized his stint in the foster care system has left him.
Themes
In the present, on the Hurds’ farm, Mr. Hurd, Mrs. Hurd, and Jack listen to Joseph’s story carefully. When Joseph finishes, he flees to the barn, and Jack can hear Rosie the cow mooing lovingly. Jack asks why Joseph can’t see Jupiter, and his parents tell him that 14-year-old Joseph can’t be a father and that meeting Joseph might disturb Jupiter. When Jack asks them whether Jupiter might want Joseph to see her, Mr. Hurd puts a comforting hand on his back.
Joseph runs to the barn for emotional support from the cows, an action that emphasizes his love of animals and thus the correctness of the cows’ unprejudiced positive attitude toward him. When Jack asks whether Jupiter might want to see Joseph, he’s pointing out a further complication in Joseph’s situation: not only does Joseph genuinely loves his child though he’s too young to be a father, but Jupiter might eventually want a relationship with him, too.
Themes
That night, in Jack and Joseph’s bedroom, Joseph stands staring out the window. When Jack asks what Joseph is doing, Joseph says he can’t see the planet Jupiter because of the moon’s brightness and doesn’t know where “she” is. Joseph announces that he’ll “find her” so he won’t be alone anymore. Jack tells Joseph that he's not alone. When Joseph says he is, Jack insists he’s not. The boys go to bed. Jack sleeps but keeps waking up. One time he wakes up and sees Joseph standing at the window. The next morning on the school bus, one of Jack’s friends warns him repeatedly not to hang out with Joseph, but he won’t say why.
When Joseph says he doesn’t know where “she” is because he can’t see the planet Jupiter, he is clearly confusing his daughter Jupiter with the planet—a confusion that emphasizes both his immaturity and his extreme emotional distress. Meanwhile, Jack’s insistence that Joseph isn’t alone shows his desire to be a true friend to Joseph as Joseph struggles with his difficult life circumstances.
Themes
