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Boy Sees Vision
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Boy Swallows Universe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Goodness, Masculinity, and Coming of Age
Trauma, Coping, and Healing
Family, Love, and Mentorship
Storytelling and Justice
Money, Suburbia, and Criminality
Summary
Analysis
In Dad’s suburb, there’s currently a redback spider infestation. One even bit Pamela Waters while she was on the toilet. Mum wants Eli and August to spend a week with her and Teddy over the summer holidays, but Eli would prefer to stay with the spiders and Dad. Eli is watching a trivia show with Dad. Even very drunk, Dad is better than all the contestants. Then, the host addresses Eli directly with a celebrity identification question: what is the last name of the Eli whose father drove him into a dam at age six, whose brother stopped talking, who watched the man he saw as a father dragged away by an evil man, and whose mother is now moving in with the man who killed the father figure?
Redback spiders are Australian cousins to black widows that are extremely poisonous. Eli is so upset with Teddy and Mum that the possibility of being bitten by a poisonous spider is far preferable to spending a week with two people who seem not to care at all about Lyle anymore. Whether the TV host addressing Eli is magical realism or Eli’s imagination is less important than the fact that it shows how much Eli still fixates on the crime Tytus Broz committed. That man—with Teddy’s help—upended Eli’s life, and Eli isn’t ready to forgive and forget.
Themes
August is painting in his and Eli’s bedroom. He’s been painting suburban scenes with outer space backgrounds. Now, August is painting a portrait of Eli looking out a classroom window at space. As August paints, Eli says he doesn’t want to go to Teddy’s. August says he doesn’t want to go either, but with a shrug, he communicates that they’re going anyway.
August looks like he’s moving on from his trauma, since he’s not just painting the moon pool anymore. Something seemed to shift for both him and Eli after Mrs. Birkbeck’s visit—now, the boys can focus on other things, since they’re not consumed by thinking about past traumas.
Themes
Teddy’s eyes are more sunken, and he’s developed a beer belly since Eli last saw him. Teddy greets Eli and August with one arm around Mum. August tries a loquat from the tree growing by the front steps, but Eli refuses—he doesn’t want anything from Teddy except to kill him. He keeps quiet though and agrees to go look at Teddy’s work truck. Now, Teddy is working as a fruit hauler. He turns on the truck’s radio and checks in with all his trucker buddies.
Just as when Eli and August first moved in with Dad, August is the one to make an effort to play along, while Eli outright refuses to pretend things are fine. Eli’s anger at Teddy is palpable, which shows how loyal Eli still is to Lyle, or to Lyle’s memory. Teddy is totally irredeemable in Eli’s eyes.
Themes
Eli liked Teddy when he first met him. He looked like Elvis, and Teddy and Lyle were friends. Now, though, Teddy is pathetic. He told Tytus Broz about Lyle, hoping to woo Mum and earn Tytus’s favor. But Tytus refused to work with Teddy because “rats [can’t] be trusted,” so Teddy got a real job driving a fruit truck. He was the only one who saw Mum while she was in prison, and he was kind to her. Eli and August listen dutifully as Teddy says that when he’s on the road, he talks to Lyle. Teddy then shows the boys his two German Shepherds, Beau and Arrow, who are his only family now. Their kennel is lavish and cushioned. August and Eli exchange a look: Teddy is a “loser.”
Eli’s hatred of Teddy is coloring how he thinks about Teddy’s new career as a fruit truck driver. Eli didn’t have anything against George, the man who snuck him into prison to see Mum, who also drove a fruit truck. But while George helped Eli do something Eli thinks was noble, Eli sees Teddy as nothing more than a pathetic “rat.” Eli is so unwilling to give Teddy the benefit of the doubt that it’s hard to tell if readers should take Eli’s assessment at face value, or believe Darren.
Themes
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Everything is fine for the first three days of Eli and August’s visit. But then, after seeing Rain Man on the fourth night, Teddy asks if August has any special powers like Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film. Eli snaps that August is just quiet, not “autistic.” Then, Eli asks why Teddy exposed Lyle. Teddy looks like the devil now and nothing like Elvis. For the next two days, Teddy doesn’t acknowledge anything Mum says. On the sixth day, Mum asks Eli to help her slow-cook lamb shanks—Teddy’s favorite—and August gives Eli a look that says Eli has no choice. At midday, Teddy leaves the house, ignoring Mum’s request that he come home at six for lamb shanks.
Lyle’s abrupt shift to being cruel and aloof after Eli calls him out suggests that Eli was right to believe Darren. Teddy seems to have gone into his relationship with Mum believing everyone would just forget what he did to his best friend—but now, Eli shows him that that’s not going to happen. This means, however, that Eli and August can focus their attention even more on making Mum happy, since Teddy won’t even let them pretend to like him now. This is why they help with the lamb shanks so dutifully.
Themes
Teddy gets home around eight, after Mum, Eli, and August have started eating. He’s drunk and has clearly taken something else, possibly meth, because he’s drooling and can’t focus. Mum fetches him his plate as Teddy leans over to August and theatrically asks August what he said. Teddy shovels some food in his mouth and says that Mum indulged August, and now that’s why August is “crazy” like Dad. Teddy says it’s brave of August and Eli to share a home with a man who tried to kill them. Mum screams at Teddy to stop, but Teddy screams back that this is his house, and his dad built the dining table, so he’ll say what he wants.
Teddy is intoxicated and isn’t being reasonable. He seems to decide that if nobody is going to play along and let him pretend to be a good guy, he’s going to point fingers at other people to deflect attention from himself (such as by suggesting that Dad tried to kill Eli and August). This is insulting to Mum, however, so she starts to verbally fight back. But for Teddy, it’s essential that he assert his power over Mum, Eli, and August, simply because they refused to pretend that Teddy is good.
Themes
Teddy says Mum, Eli, and August can leave. They’re not worthy of sitting at his table. Mum picks up her plate to take it to the kitchen, but Teddy slaps it onto the floor and calls Beau and Arrow to finish Eli and August’s plates. Mum stands for a moment—and then punches a set of Teddy’s grandmother’s plates. She smashes more dishes as Eli and August stare, stunned. When she throws a mug at Teddy’s head, Teddy rushes Mum. He pushes Eli and August aside and drags her out of the house by her hair. She isn’t screaming, which is terrifying. Then, he drags her into the dog kennel and shoves her face into the dogs’ food bowl. He only stops when August knocks him out with the cooking pot. Minutes later, Mum and the boys have packed their things and left the house.
The way that Teddy drags Mum out of his home mirrors the way Tytus Broz’s crony drug Lyle out of his house years ago. Eli and August are terrified to see Mum not screaming, in part because it makes it seem like she’s putting on a good face so she doesn’t worry them. This implies that Teddy may be violent like this on a regular basis, as Teddy’s abuse doesn’t seem nearly as surprising to her as it does to the boys.
Themes
An hour later, Mum, Eli, and August catch a train to Sister Patricia’s house. In the morning, over breakfast, Eli asks Mum what she’s going to do now. Before she can answer, Eli suggests she spend the night with them and Dad. Then he asks where she wants to move. Wherever she wants to go, he’ll make it happen—maybe they could move to The Gap. August shoots Eli a warning look as Eli says there are great culs-de-sac there. Mum has to yell to cut Eli off. With tears in her eyes, she says she’s not leaving Teddy.
As far as Eli is concerned, the next steps here are obvious: Mum leaves her abuser, and they all use Lyle’s drug money to live happily ever after in The Gap. But August’s warning look suggests that he knows this is naïve of Eli. And Mum refusing to leave Teddy introduces Eli to an uncomfortable fact: that it is often very difficult for victims of domestic abuse to leave their abusers. Mum has her reasons for staying, but they don’t matter to Eli. What’s more important to him is that he feels blindsided and betrayed.
Themes
