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Eli’s Lucky Finger
The red telephone symbolizes the strength of Eli and August’s relationship, as well as Eli’s path to healing from trauma. August and Eli first discover the red phone in the secret underground room that Lyle dug. According to Lyle, the phone connects directly to an identical phone at Tytus Broz’s mansion, and the phone doesn’t accept calls like a normal phone. This gives the phone a sinister air, and it suggests that the boys’ home is somehow intimately connected to Tytus Broz, the man who destroys their relatively happy life in Darra with Mum and Lyle.
Though the phone ostensibly can’t take calls, Eli and August regularly hear the phone ring. When they pick it up, they hear an adult version of August talking to them. The fact that the person on the phone when Eli takes calls is a mature August who gives sage advice—such as that Lyle is capable of lying, or that Mum is having a hard time mentally and emotionally in prison—speaks to how much Eli trusts his brother. It’s later implied that the voice on the phone is just a figment of Eli’s imagination. If that explanation is true, it’s significant that when Eli picks up the phone confused and in need of guidance, the voice he hears is that of his older brother. August is the one whom Eli wants to hear from, and Eli trusts his brother to tell him difficult truths that he won’t accept hearing from anyone else.
After Mrs. Birkbeck visits Dad to discuss what she perceives as the boys’ dangerous ideas about the red telephone and the moon pool, Eli—who’s 16 at the time—begins to forcefully reject August’s insistence that there’s a voice on the telephone, and that the voice belongs to an older August. This represents the beginning of Eli’s journey of healing from traumatic experiences in his past, such as Dad driving him and August into a dam years ago and of Iwan Krol cutting off his finger. Rejecting August’s story is a way for Eli to assert his independence. And while Eli accepts August’s (or his own) guidance from the red phone in Tytus Broz’s underground bunker as a young adult, it’s a mark of Eli’s maturity when, mere weeks later while visiting Lyle’s old house for work, he chooses not to answer the ringing phone and to kiss Caitlyn Spies instead. As an adult whose adversaries (Tytus Broz and Iwan Krol) have been successfully vanquished, Eli doesn’t need to rely on his imagination or necessarily on his brother to keep himself safe. Instead, he can choose to symbolically move forward into adulthood.
The Red Telephone Quotes in Boy Swallows Universe
The Boy Swallows Universe quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Red Telephone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Boy Seeks Help
Quotes
“What if that’s not enough, kid?” he asks. “Two and a half years is a long time.”
You said it yourself, a lag gets a little bit easier every time you wake up.”
“I didn’t have two kids on the outside,” he says. “Her two and a half years will feel like twenty of mine. That men’s prison is filled with a hundred blokes who think they’re bad to the bone because they’ve done fifteen years. But those blokes don’t love nothin’ and nothin’ loves them back and that makes things easy for ‘em. It’s all those mums across the road who are true hard nuts. They wake each day knowing there’s some lost little shit like you out there waiting to love them back.”
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Boy Tightens Noose
Quotes
But you heard them, Eli. You heard them on the phone, too.
“I was playing along, Gus,” I say. “I bought into the bullshit because I felt sorry for you being such a nutter.”
I’m sorry, Gus. I’m sorry.
“Well, here’s the reality, Gus,” I say. I point at Dad. “He’s so fuckin’ crazy he tried to drive us into a dam. And you’re just as crazy as him and maybe I’m just as crazy as you.”
[…]
“Did you mean to do it?”
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Boy Conquers Moon
Quotes
“I know you’re just the voice in my head,” I say. “You’re a figment of my imagination. I use you to escape from moments of great trauma.”
“Escape?” the man echoes. “What, like Slim over the Boggo Road walls? Escape from yourself, Eli, do ya, like the Houdini of your own mind?”
“773 8173,” I say. “That’s just the number we’d tap into the calculator when we were kids. That’s just ‘Eli Bell’ upside down and back to front.”
“Brilliant!” the man says. “Upside down and back to front, like the universe, hey Eli? You still got the axe?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” the man says. “He’s coming, Eli.”
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Girl Saves Boy
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“Just let it ring out, Eli,” she says softly. “What’s he going to tell you”—she puts her other hand behind my head, her perfect and gentle hand sliding down to the back of my neck—“that you don’t already know?”
And the phone rings again as she moves into me and the phone rings again as she closes her eyes and presses her lips against mine and I will remember this moment through the stars I see on the ceiling of this secret room and the spinning planets those stars surround and the dust of a million galaxies scattered across her bottom lip. I will remember this kiss through the big bang. I will remember the end through the beginning.
And the phone stops ringing.
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Get the entire Boy Swallows Universe LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Red Telephone Symbol Timeline in Boy Swallows Universe
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Red Telephone appears in Boy Swallows Universe. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Boy Makes Rainbow
...the wardrobe, and Eli follows. The hole leads to a dark room with a red telephone that rings. August picks it up, ignoring Eli’s warnings to leave it alone. He then...
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Eli drops the phone and follows August into a tunnel leading out of the room. The tunnel reminds Eli...
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Boy Loses Luck
...final Saturday run, Lyle tells Eli and August about the underground room and the red telephone. Lyle explains that he dug the room himself, initially to store boxes of marijuana in...
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Boy Busts Out
Eli wakes up and hears Lyle’s red telephone ringing. He crawls back through the tunnel and picks up the phone. The man’s voice...
(full context)
Boy Stirs Monster
...protect Eli. Eli tells August about his adventures and what the man on the red telephone said about Mum. Just then, a howl comes from the house. August says it’s Dad...
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...August tells Eli that everything will be alright; “It gets good.” The man on the phone said so. Eli thinks he’s not crazy, he’s just tired, as August turns the light...
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...the boy swallowed the universe. Then, Eli asks who the man is on the red telephone. August pauses, writes it in the air, and then with prodding, says it out loud:...
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Boy Seeks Help
...outside. Eli asks if Slim believes what he says about the man on the red telephone, since Dad doesn’t. Slim does, but he also thinks Dad isn’t right not to let...
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Boy Parts Sea
...is to make time speed up. He thinks about Mum, the man on the red telephone, and what Mrs. Birkbeck said about kids and trauma. He thinks about getting a butterfly...
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...choir singing “Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” the same song the man on the red telephone was singing. A young woman knocks and lets herself in. Introducing herself as Debbie, she...
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Crying, Eli lets himself down and imagines the red telephone and Lena’s room. He thinks of Mum and he sings her favorite song, “Ruby Tuesday.”...
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Boy Steals Ocean
...there are other Augusts out there, in places at the other end of a red telephone. Dad has never heard of the telephone and is getting frustrated. Then, suddenly, he breaks...
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...beliefs help them process. Or maybe they do hear things, and talking about the red telephone is the only way they can make sense of it. But no matter the truth,...
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Boy Tightens Noose
...calming things to Eli in the air, but Eli screeches for August to talk. The phone rings, but everyone ignores it as Eli insists that Mrs. Birkbeck was right—August made up...
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Boy Drowns Sea
...in a secret room, where Bevan takes calls from a mysterious man on a red telephone? Addressing Slim, Eli says things keep changing, but the cycles keep repeating. Ignoring Brian Robertson’s...
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Boy Conquers Moon
...to stop with the whole coming back nonsense. The voices they heard on the red telephone were just in their head. Then, August tells Eli to talk to Caitlyn Spies, just...
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...door swings open, Caitlyn’s flashlight finds Bevan. The boy is alive and holding a red telephone to his ear. Bevan holds the phone out to Eli, and Eli takes it. The...
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...moment with Caitlyn. She asks if he was really talking to someone on the red telephone. Eli asks what she thinks, but she doesn’t answer. She asks if she can drive...
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Girl Saves Boy
...the wardrobe door to reveal the secret room and leads Caitlyn into it. The red telephone is still there, and Caitlyn recoils from it.
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Eli moves closer to it, and then the red telephone starts to ring. Caitlyn doesn’t react, so Eli asks if she hears it. Caitlyn tells...
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