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Part 2, Chapter 11: The Magician
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Magic, Cinema, and Imagination
Friendship, Honesty, and Vulnerability
Meaning and Purpose
Hardship and Maturity
Summary
Analysis
The story switches to first-person, and the narrator reveals that he is Professor Alcofrisbas. Professor Alcofrisbas (aka Hugo) says that in the years after he met Georges and Isabelle, he built an automaton all by himself. It is an incredibly complex machine that can write the story of his life. In fact, the machine wrote the entire story of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, pictures and all. The final pictures the machine creates show a full moon slowly growing smaller until it can no longer be seen in the night sky.
Hugo Cabret is a story all about tricks, magic, and the imagination. As such, it is fitting that the story ends on a sort of literary trick that sends the imagination soaring. It is also fitting that Hugo’s greatest trick tells the story of his troubled youth because without Georges’s automaton, he would not be able to build his. The story comes full circle as the moon disappears in the night sky, creating a scene reminiscent of the novel’s opening pages.
Themes
