Orbiting Jupiter

Maddie names her daughter Jupiter after Joseph’s favorite planet. When he moves in with the Hurds, Joseph develops a nightly ritual of searching the night sky for the planet Jupiter. To him, the planet symbolizes his daughter; like the planet, she is an unreachable distance away from Joseph. When Jack asks Mr. Hurd to point out Jupiter in the night sky, he can’t, but Joseph finds it immediately, explaining that he “always know[s] where Jupiter is” (24). When Joseph realizes that the Hurds are hesitant to help him find his daughter, he returns to the bedroom he shares with Jack that night. He goes to the bedroom window and reports, “I can’t see Jupiter […] the moon’s too bright. And I don’t know where she is” (86). In this moment, without the Hurds’ help, he feels farther from his daughter than ever.

Joseph’s nightly ritual of gazing at the planet Jupiter has an effect on Jack, who often joins him at the window. By joining Joseph in his search for the planet at night, Jack signifies that he will help Joseph in his search for his daughter. When Joseph runs away, however, he literally and figuratively distances himself from Jack. Without accepting Jack’s help, Joseph cannot complete his journey, and the separation is illustrated by a snowstorm that interrupts their ritual: “I wrapped my arms around myself and stood by the desk and looked out the window for Jupiter. In the storm, I couldn’t see a thing. Joseph wouldn’t be able to either” (142).

Jupiter’s foster mother gives Joseph a picture of Jupiter when he arrives in Brunswick. When he returns to the Hurd farm, Joseph compares his daughter to the planet more directly: “Joseph stood by the window in the cold dark. He held Jupiter’s picture, looked at it, looked up at the sky, looked back at the picture” (164). 

Despite his difficult relationship with people, Joseph shows a strong ability to connect with animals. When Mr. Hurd shows Joseph how to milk the cows, “Joseph went up behind Rosie and reached out and rubbed the end of her back […] He didn’t know that Rosie loved anyone who rubbed her back” (6). Joseph’s affinity for Rosie is the first connection he makes on the Hurd farm, and their relationship deepens throughout his time there. As well, Jack describes cows as good judges of character. When Brook arrives at the farm for the first time, the cows grow anxious. Jack insists that, “you can tell a whole lot about someone from the way cows are around him” (32). They, like Mr. and Mrs. Hurd, provide the boys both comfort and wisdom.

Jack’s fear of falling through the river ice stems from an incident involving a dog. As a child, Jack and his mother watched a yellow dog fall through the ice and struggle to save itself: “[The dog] stopped, put its head down on the ice, slid into the dark water, and was gone” (38). The image haunts Jack for years, but it also pushes him to save Joseph when he falls through the ice of the same river.

As well, the boys bond while riding the Hurds’ horse, Quintus Sertorius. The horse’s name comes from a Roman general who turned against the Empire. The general Sertorius explained that tribes could defeat Rome in small chunks at a time but not collectively at once; he likened his strategy to pulling hairs from a horse’s tail. Similarly, Joseph must make small gains in his journey to find Jupiter rather than blindly chase after her.