In the Space of Good And Evil: The Janitor in Space by Amber Sparks

In a new series, I am posting all my critical work from my recent MFA program. In this story, we get to experience an interesting view of someone who works on a space station and has some interesting moral ideas about the people. This was the very first bit of critical work I had ever done!

The short story “Janitor in Space” uses a third-person point of view to analyze the concept of good and evil through the lens of being a janitor on a space station. The point of view creates the juxtaposition of cleaning as a metaphor for redemption. 

 In the second paragraph, we are introduced to this concept, “The astronauts are good but unclean, thinks the space janitor. Like the astronaut who left liquid salt floating in little globs all over the kitchen today.” Despite their uncleanliness, the Janitor views the astronauts as good. This point of view takes us into the head of the protagonist in a more powerful way than internal dialogue. This reinforces the idea of the person as object and the good and evil dichotomy. 

The writer uses the items and surfaces repeatedly cleaned to reinforce the janitor’s good and evil or black and white world. “She cleans lint, dust, oil, and grease from their machines, cleans the glassware and lab equipment, soaps down sinks, and sterilizes microscopes. She refills and labels tubes and bottles in her careful, neat handwriting. She keeps the station clean and shiny as the future.” The 3rd person’s point of view creates everything in the world of the short story as an object. The janitor is an object, the astronauts are objects, and the way the story is told from this perspective reinforces a feeling that from the perspective of the janitor, everything and everyone is either good or bad and dirty or clean. 

The writer waits until the back half of the story to reveal that the janitor is an ex-convict. This furthers the idea of good and evil in this piece and relates the experience using the point of view as memory, “In the lockup, most of the women didn’t. They were on her side, they said. They said the name of God and the name of certain men and spat, teeth pressed together in a kind of crooked, inward anger.” Interestingly, it is not revealed why the space station was willing to hire a convicted criminal. Despite the point of view, some details are not disclosed. 

The writer uses the job interview’s casual nature to reflect a world where you can be buying Miller Lite as a bodega and get hired to scrub a space station the next like a regular Terran job. The point of view creates a certain amount of reportage about the pedantic nature of her work. The reader is told that the janitor finds her work necessary. The point of view creates distance between the janitor and the crew. “She almost never sees anyone except the night watchman, who is an elderly mute and who spends most of the night watching porn in the security office.” 

The exposition and scene are blended because of the point of view. As the writer talks about the good astronauts, we are given several scenes to provide us with a setting and scene. Right at the opening, we see that “The janitor makes her way through the hallway with purpose, suctioning space dust and human debris from crevices of the space station.”

The point of view also tells the story as if it were reportage. There is no dialogue that tells a story. The point of view relates the story to the reader directly. This point of view’s effectiveness is that it creates distance between the subjects of the story and the reader and creates a world of objects that is important to the narrative.

There’s a potential of growth but not character growth to speak of. The writer only gives us a growth potential. The point of view aids this by reporting to us through the eyes of our character-object of the janitor and her hope for the future. At the end of the story, we read, “And that makes it beautiful, out here among the cold and bright beginnings.” Here the point of view gives us an indication that the janitor looks to space for the possibility of new beginnings and the hope that perhaps she might one day be good as she is clean.