59 pages • 1 hour read
Stuart GibbsSpace Case
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Dashiell Gibson
The protagonist and narrator of Space Case, Dashiell, who goes by Dash, is the 12-year-old son of an engineer and a scientist. Dash is portrayed as a smart, observant young adult who is dedicated to figuring out problems and standing up for what is right. This curiosity and drive is supported by his parents, who often talk to him about his ideas and issues. Over the course of the novel, Dash works on solving the mystery of Dr. Holtz’s murder while growing as a person in his capacity to come up with solutions and be an advocate for justice.
One of Dash’s most important character traits is his ability to find patterns where others see disparate events and facts. This knack for critical thinking helps him establish possible suspects in the murder case and eventually identify the murderer. Stuart Gibbs’s characterization of Dash in this way prompts adolescent readers to see their own intellectual curiosity as a strength, even if they aren’t dealing with as significant of a problem as a murder on a moon base.
Dash is also portrayed as a caring person who wants to have positive relationships with the people around him, helping him build community. He is kind to his younger sister, Violet, and he is thoughtful in his conversations with others on the base, even when they are very different from him. He takes care to observe how other parents treat their children, and he uses these observations to shape how he builds relationship with his peers. Dash also stands up to bullies, like Patton Sjoberg, when they are being mean to other people. Overall, Gibbs paints Dash as a dedicated member of his community who is nonetheless willing to subvert authority if that’s what it takes to do what is right.
Kira Howard
Kira Howard is one of the most important supplementary characters in Space Case, and her intelligence and eager willingness to subvert authority is the lever that Dash needs to find the right clues and uncover what happened to Dr. Holtz. When Kira arrives, it is amid the excitement of welcome day, and Dash notices both her small stature and her immediate drive to be able to do everything. Kira’s intense curiosity leads Kira to ask Dash to let her help with the investigation after she overhears Dash’s (apparently one-way) conversation through the thin shared wall of their residencies. Kira thereafter uses her wits to figure out how to hack the moon base systems and access the critical video footage of Holtz’s exit to the lunar surface.
Time and time again, Kira is characterized as a fearless young person who grasps that her status as a child lets her get away with subverting authority in ways that adults might not get away with. She is the character who convinces Dash to go out of the air lock to find Holtz’s phone, which helps drive the plot forward toward the conclusion. While Kira and Dash are somewhat different, Gibbs portrays them both in a similarly positive light in regards to their intelligence and courage.
Nina Stack, Moon-Base Commander
An imposing personality, Nina Stack is the adult who most often chastises or punishes Dash. She is the commander of the moon base and therefore representative of authority, especially NASA’s authority, throughout the novel. For some of the novel, Nina appears to be the antagonist, since she continuously tells Dash to stop investigating Dr. Holtz’s death, and she seems to be mean to him for political reasons.
Yet for all of Nina’s outbursts at Dash, though she does seem to be just as rigid as Dash had originally perceived, she is not actually evil. Nina thus represents an important tension for Dash (and readers) to learn from: People can be harsh without being badly intentioned. Nina wants to follow the rules set by NASA and to keep the moon base functioning, and that desire sometimes leads her to manipulate others to protect NASA’s reputation and to over-step with the younger residents of the base, even inflicting unfair punishments. In dealing with Nina over the course of the novel, Dash learns empathy while also developing a sense of when it is necessary to subvert authority.
Zan Perfonic
When Zan Perfonic first appears in the novel, she is portrayed as an enigmatic temporary security worker who will only be on base for a few days. Eventually, she is revealed to be one of the most important characters in the entire story. Zan is “beautiful, with olive skin and long dark hair” (97) and eyes that are, in Dash’s opinion, “extremely unusual” (101). These descriptions of Zan serve as the first key foreshadowing that there is something off with her presence on the base, though Dash won’t know what it is until the resolution of the text. In the beginning, Zan is characterized mainly as the catalyst for Dash to continue the investigation into Dr. Holtz’s death: Specifically, Zan tells him that she needs him to hack the computer system to access footage.
The Investigation reaches its peak as Dash comes close to finding the culprit, and yet Zan is only intermittently present, which helps lead Dash to his discovery that Zan is the intelligent alien life form that Dr. Holtz had discovered. In the final moments of the novel, Zan explains her presence on the base, including that she is really just a mental projection of herself. Gibbs’s portrayal of Zan and her thoughts is an important imagined aspect of the novel’s plot, as it shows a positive possibility in terms of how alien life forms might make contact with humans.
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