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Boy Follows Footsteps
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 a letter to Eli, a current prisoner in Boggo Road, Alex, thanks Eli for his last letter and says it was the best thing to happen to him last month. Inmates have been fighting, and one fight resulted in the guards taking away everyone’s TV privileges—so if Eli can share anything about Days of Our Lives, that wouldbe much appreciated. The inmates have collectively adopted a cat they’ve named Tripod. Alex counsels Eli to keep up on his studies so he doesn’t end up being drugged and raped in prison—that’s what happens to kids who slack off. Then, Alex explains that you can tell a man wants to knife you by their eyes. He also sends his regards to Slim and suggests that Eli call Dad.
This letter from Alex builds on the idea Darren introduced in the last chapter: that it’s impossible to identify a whether someone is good or bad just by looking at them. It’s not clear yet what Alex is in prison for, but he and his fellow prisoners read as perfectly normal people who are interested in television shows and keeping pets. His advice to stay in school might be overdramatic, but it nevertheless shows that he’s interested in helping Eli stay on the right path.
Themes
It’s Saturday morning. Slim is watching August and Eli while Mum and Lyle are supposedly seeing a movie. Since Slim spent 39 years in Boggo Road and couldn’t receive letters for most of them, he understands how important letters can be to inmates. He and Lyle met when Slim was in a “release-to-work” program in a car shop. They’d work together during the day and chat, and sometimes, Lyle would slip letters into Slim’s pack. Then, two years ago, Eli found Slim writing letters to inmates and asked if he could write one. He’s been corresponding with Alex Bermudez, a former sergeant-at-arms of a motorcycle gang, ever since.
The implication is that Lyle and Mum aren’t seeing a movie; they’re dealing drugs, but Eli isn’t willing to bring this up with Slim yet. Letters, Eli and Slim show, can be an important way to connect with another person. Letters were the foundation of Lyle and Slim’s relationship years ago, and now, Eli is building a relationship with Alex through their correspondence. Alex seems like a very nice person in his letter, which seems at odds with his role as a high-ranking member of a motorcycle gang.
Themes
Eli interrupts Slim’s writing and asks if Slim actually killed the taxi driver. Slim trembles, and Eli knows he hurt Slim’s feelings, so he apologizes. But he explains that they did a feature of Slim in the South-West Star today, and the paper suggested that Slim didn’t do it. Slim asks if Eli thinks he did it. Eli doesn’t know; all he knows is that somehow, Slim survived prison. Eli says that he doesn’t think Slim is capable of murder since he’s a good man. Slim warns Eli not to underestimate people and asks to see the article.
It’s interesting that Slim doesn’t answer Eli’s direct question, but his explanation suggests that he thinks it’s more important for Eli to decide for himself than to just take whatever Slim says at face value. Eli’s response shows that for now, he thinks the world is divided up neatly into good men and bad men. A man like Slim, who shows Eli such care and compassion, can’t possibly be capable of something as terrible as murder.
Themes
The article introduces Slim as formerly the most dangerous prisoner in the country. He was orphaned at 12 and was a seasoned criminal by the time he first escaped Boggo Road at age 30 in 1940. He scaled a section of wall that the guards couldn’t see—now, that spot is known as “Halliday’s Leap.” He was released in 1949, married Irene, and was convicted of murdering a taxi driver in 1952. Supposedly, Slim confessed to the murder while hospitalized for shooting himself in the leg, but Slim refuted this during the trial. He was sentenced to life in prison. Irene swore she’d “stand by her man.”
In addition to giving readers more background information on who Slim is, his story turns him into a larger-than-life character for Eli. It’s significant that Slim’s life of crime seemed to begin when he was orphaned at 12 years old—the age that Eli is right now. Slim may have turned to crime because unlike Eli, he didn’t have the support of parents or chosen family members like Mum and Lyle.
Themes
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The article continues that after another escape attempt, Slim was put in Black Peter for two weeks. This turned him into an urban legend. Slim spent the next 11 years in maximum security. By 1968, news outlets were reporting that Slim had become a “vegetable”—but this wasn’t true. Slim mellowed as he hit his 60s, and he became interested in literature and poetry. Finally, Slim was released after 24 years and has maintained his innocence ever since. His cell in Boggo Road is still empty. When Slim finishes reading, Eli notes that Irene really didn’t stand by him, but Slim insists that she did.
Eli told readers about Slim’s experience in Black Peter at the very beginning of the novel. Black Peter is where Slim developed his coping mechanism of being able to retreat into memories to make time go faster, and at least one of those memories was of Irene. Slim and Eli don’t elaborate on what Irene did, but it seems likely she and Slim divorced at some point. Nevertheless, her memory may have helped comfort Slim throughout his 24 years in prison.
Themes
Eli returns to his letter to Alex. He asks what Alex thinks of the current prime minister, and shares that Slim thinks the current prime minister is a lot like a prisoner whom Slim knew in the 1960s. That prisoner ran a betting pool and figured out how to use cockroaches to deliver inmates’ winnings—cigarettes—to their cells. Then, Eli writes that he’s decided all the world’s problems can be traced back to someone’s dad, and the terrible things that dad did. He’d love to hear about Alex’s dad. Eli offers a quick recap of Days of Our Lives and includes a copy of Slim’s favorite poem in a postscript.
By telling Alex this anecdote about Slim’s prison buddy, Eli shows again how important Slim is to him. Eli offers none of his own opinions about the prime minister—Slim’s opinions matter to him more than his own, at least in this context. However, Eli is starting to think for himself—his theory that everything bad in the world can be traced back to fathers seems to be something Eli came up with himself. This also offers another clue that Eli’s dad isn’t someone Eli likes or thinks he can rely on.
Themes
His letter finished, Eli asks about the name Slim took after he got out of prison, Arthur Dale. Dale, Slim confirms, came from an Officer Dale, who was gentlemanly and kind to him in prison. Slim explains that most of the guards in prison are terrible people, but Officer Dale was different. Once, as officers were spraying Slim with a pressure hose, dumping hot water on him, and poking him with a hot poker, Slim pulled a knife. Officer Dale told the officers to stand down.
Like Eli, Slim is interested in identifying the good people in the world, and in figuring out how exactly they differ from those he considers bad. Officer Dale seemed to believe that it was cruel to torment Slim in this way, while the other guards didn’t seem to care that they were treating another person so inhumanely. This had a profound effect on Slim.
Themes
Slim says Officer Dale’s kindness touched him so much that he nearly cried. That’s when they put him in Black Peter again. It was cold then, and Slim got through it by figuring that if Officer Dale was a good person still after working among “bastards,” maybe Slim would still be a good person after he got out. As Eli studies the article, he asks how Slim survived without committing suicide. Slim says he did work a kind of magic: he figured out how to manipulate time. He sped up time by keeping busy and imagining happier things, and slowed time down when he was outside smelling flowers. Then, Slim gives Eli and August his favorite piece of advice: “Do your time before it does you.”
Slim’s advice can be distilled down into a couple simple ideas: that it’s important to strive to be a good person, and that it’s also important to slow down and try to enjoy happy things. Doing these two things, Slim implies, is what kept him from wanting to die. Telling the boys to “do their time before it does them” is another way of saying that people have a choice in how they experience their lives. They can choose to focus on the good parts, and if they don’t, it’s all too easy to feel powerless and pessimistic about life. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether Eli is internalizing these ideas, or whether he’s too busy idolizing Slim to grasp his meaning.
Themes
The first time Eli heard Slim dispense this advice, they were in the engine room of Brisbane City Hall’s clock tower. An old friend was the lift operator and he snuck them up the stairs to admire the view. Slim jerks Eli back to the present by asking if Eli is still catching all the details of his life. Eli says he is—but Slim says Eli missed the most important part of the article, the byline. Eli looks and then curses at August. The reporter’s name is Caitlyn Spies.
Giving out the advice to “do your time before it does you” at the top of a clock tower—a location that makes time into something physical, rather than just an idea—is significant. Time becomes something real that Eli can look at and control, rather than something more intangible and ephemeral. Learning that Caitlyn Spies is a crime reporter is a revelation for Eli. She’s a real person, not just a figment of August’s imagination.
Themes
