Rheya’s First Appearance to Kris Kelvin Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris tells the story of Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, who goes to the ocean planet Solaris to study the phenomena taking place there. Upon arrival at Station Solaris, which hovers over the surface of the planet, he is warned by the scientists on board that they have been receiving mysterious visitors. Kris first encounters one of these visitors outside of Gibarian’s room, but does not have one of his own until he wakes up to see his deceased wife, Rheya, sitting in the room with him.
The entirety of Kris’s first encounter with Rheya not only gives us some background information on Kelvin’s life, but also foreshadows many of the things to come later in the book. Kris reacts very much like I would expect him to; he thinks he is just dreaming. The strange events taking place on the station had made it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality. Kris knew there was no way that he could be seeing Rheya again, as she had been dead for 10 years, but felt at peace to see her. The whole time, however, he wanted to wake up.
In his narration, he specifically says this was because he had work to do and didn’t want to oversleep, but I also believe he wanted to wake up to prove he was dreaming. While kissing Rheya, he realizes that he might not be dreaming, because everything felt so real. He is finally able to definitively prove that he was not dreaming by stabbing himself with a misshapen tool. Once Kris realizes that he is, without a doubt, wide awake, he begins looking for evidence that the Rheya in his room is not the real Rheya.
Things like her voice, her appearance, and her mannerisms all seemed to indicate that she was real, but she would occasionally make mistakes, doing things that Barnes 2 the real Rheya would never do. I believe these mistakes can be attributed to two things. First of all, the ocean created Rheya based off of Kris’s memories, but there are many small things that Kris did not specifically remember. When the visitor Rheya tried to fill in the blanks, however, Kris could immediately see that they were not right, even if he was not sure what the “right” gesture was.
Second, the ocean was not able to create perfect replicas. Although it had progressed a long way from creating partial replicas of machinery to gardens and oversized babies, it still had not perfected human motor skills. Although Rheya’s perfectly true to life appearance could be some of the most convincing evidence that the visitor Rheya was the real Rheya, her appearance is also some of the strongest proof against her being real. It had been 10 years since she had died, but she had not aged at all. If she had been alive during that time period, she certainly would have aged some.
In addition, she also had the scar from the hypodermic needle she had used to inject the lethal solution she used to kill herself. I believe visitor Rheya’s flaws can be attributed to the imperfect ability of the ocean to recreate objects. In addition, the visitors were created from the memories of their hosts, but the ocean did not have the power to modify its creation after interpreting the memories, so it could not “update’ any of Rheya’s qualities. Another weakness of the visitors is that they must always be around their host.
I believe this goes back to the fact that they are created from memories, but I think this has another effect on Kris; it is almost a way of punishing him. He had left Rheya right before she committed suicide, and I believe that the ocean was trying to use the visitors to teach the hosts some sort of lesson about their wrongdoings in the past. For Kris,this meant he could not get away from Rheya, which would bring back painful memories about what he had done. Kris also discovers that the visitors are not even human, much less the person they are imitating. Barnes 3 Namely, the visitors have superhuman powers.
After realizing that Rheya was not real, but instead was one of the visitors Snow had described, Kris tried to restrain her so that he could have some time to do his work alone, but she throws him back violently, not even appearing to exert any force. Kris gives her a strong dose of sleeping medication, but this has no effect on her. Most notably, however, Kris tricks her into going into a rocket and locks her in, but she begins shaking the rocket violently, stronger than anything else in the universe. Kris launches the rocket, thinking he is done dealing with Rheya, and he is, at least until he wakes up again.
Kris’s first encounter with Rheya gives us some interesting insights in to his personality. It becomes obvious that Kris is incredibly remorseful and shameful over leaving Rheya, and even believes that he, in effect, killed her. Rheya also mentions ris’s temper, which would reinforce the bitterness of their fight before Kris left her. We also see Kris’s compassionate side in his first encounter, although briefly. He wishes he could tell the visitor Rheya that she was not the real Rheya, but he knew that telling her the truth would cause her more pain than tricking her into thinking that she was real.
Kris’s first encounter with Rheya marks a significant turning point in Solaris. Before, the only visitors he had encountered on the station were those of the other scientists. Now, he has one of his own to deal with. Although he thinks he got rid of her by launching her into space, Snow informs Kris that she will be back, but this first encounter left Kris better equipped to deal with her when she returned. Snow had warned Kris to “play by the rules” when dealing with these visitors, but he did not understand what Snow meant until he actually experienced what happened when the visitors are angered firsthand.
Upon launching Rheya into space, Kris was able to see what had caused the burns on Snow’s forehead and the lacerations to his hands, and he realized that he was not the first person to try getting rid of the visitors. I also believe Kris’s encounter with Rheya gives us important background information on his life prior to coming to Solaris, and that gives us a baseline to judge the progression Barnes 4 of Kris’s character throughout the book.
