Hidden Figures Literary Elements

Nonfiction

The Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, from the early 1940s to the early 1970s

Third-person past tense, with occasional first-person narration from the author (particularly in the prologue and epilogue)

The tone of the novel (like most nonfiction writing) attempts to be objective, knowledgeable, and engaged. The mood of the story is inspirational, with proper seriousness given to discussions of discrimination.

The protagonists are primarily Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden; the primary antagonists are institutions, such as Jim Crow laws and unequal hiring practices, and in a sense NACA/NASA, whose discrimination they must combat.

Black female mathematicians are integral to operations at Langley, but they aren't publicly recognized or remembered. Despite their brilliance and importance, few women or people of color at Langley were able to gain recognition or promotion for their achievements.

Over decades-spanning careers, the four women (and many like them) make pivotal contributions to NASA/NACA. The most direct character-related climax occurs when Katherine Johnson manually confirms the computations for America's first manned orbital flight. The novel's structural climax occurs when the Apollo 11 mission takes astronauts to the Moon and back.

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“Towering behind one building was a gigantic three-story-high ribbed-metal pipe, like a caterpillar loosed from the mind of H. G. Wells.” (page 38)

The novel makes numerous other allusions to literature (like the Trojan horse), religion (primarily Christian), and legends (like King Arthur).

In describing the "Colored Computers" sign at NACA, Shetterly says "It didn’t presage the kind of racial violence that could spring out of nowhere, striking even the most economically secure Negroes like kerosene poured on a smoldering ember," using the visual imagery of a smoldering ember and kerosene to communicate the dangerous, rapid-fire nature of racial violence in America.

The United States needs Americans of color to contribute to the war effort and the space race, but it denies opportunities to people of color that would have helped the nation succeed.

“Butler proceeded with discretion: no big announcement in the Daily Press, no fanfare in Air Scoop. But he also proceeded with direction: nothing to herald the arrival of the Negro women to the laboratory, but nothing to derail their arrival either.” (Chapter 1, page 7)

Katherine Johnson and Eunice Smith are described as “two rabid hoops fans,” using metonymy (hoops for basketball).

In "the double consciousness that throttled their souls," the double consciousness of black folks in segregated America is personified, able to throttle or choke.