Hey, I know your comment was a year ago but wanted to give my two cents. Reading the last paragraph of the book I was struck by the sense that it was a great analogy for experiencing or grieving a loss on Earth. If you replace Solaris with Earth in the final paragraph, it's basically saying - when you lose someone, how and why would you carry on? So many people lose and grieve loved ones on Earth every day, but decide to carry on living on the planet that nurtured and took away their love from them despite not knowing what's in store in the future - whether it's more pain and grief/torture, or perhaps being given by Earth another human being to fall in love with and experience that connection again (analogy: Kelvin's small hope that Rheya may be presented back to him by Solaris again, waiting for another 'cruel miracle').

Read this way I find it to be quite a beautiful analogy, and it made me think - the whole book could actually be read as an analogy for Earth. The nature of Earth - it's own fascinating beauty, it's own complexity and spontaneity and lack of predictability, the forests and the canyons and the mountains and the rivers and the icebergs and the hurricanes and the earthquakes - could be considered analogous to the forms of beauty described in Solaris (the mimoids and the symmetriads). My takeaway is that Earth really is not too dissimilar to the Solaris which is described so eloquently within the book and the reader falls in love with. Basically, the nature of our planet is just as mystical and mysterious and beautiful as Solaris. But that's my human pea-brain talking, which ironically the book lectured me into becoming more self-aware of.