Back to AtD. The atmospheric sun.

[Mark Kohut]

 p. 984 "The sun hammered the barren badlands."  I first want to point to the prose beauty of that simple sentence. 
those A's, those consonants, that rhythm.  

Then this from early in V. (after Rachel takes Benny on that ride from hell)
'Sun beat down out of a cloudless, unprotective heaven".....

Atmospheric Wasteland?;Camusian relentless existential Algerian sun; the blistering Florida
sun on all the retirees in The Day of the Locust?.......The Sheltering Sky......??

Ain't no transcendant meanings here...and from the meteorites we get ...answers?