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Part 2, Chapter 5: Papa Georges Made Movies
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 next day, Hugo opens the toy shop and acts like its owner. He sells toys to several customers, and he plans to use the money to buy medicine for Georges. Isabelle meets Hugo at the toy shop and spends the day reading from a book of Greek myths. When customers aren’t around, she reads out loud to Hugo. In particular, she reads the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Hugo relates to Prometheus because he is a thief. Additionally, Hugo recalls seeing a painting of Prometheus in the Film Academy’s Library. Hugo wonders if the painting represents a different version of the Prometheus story—one where Prometheus steals the fire to help humans create film.
Again, Hugo demonstrates his intelligence on two counts. First, he comes up with a smart way to get Georges’s money. Unlike his job maintaining the clocks, the toy stand will give him cash, which he and Isabelle can actually use. Second, he manages a symbolically complex interpretation of the Prometheus painting, an interpretation that the story will confirm later. One way to think about the Prometheus story as it relates to this novel is to put Georges in Prometheus’s place. Georges is one of the people who gave humanity film, and now his creation is causing him great pain.
Themes
While working the toy stand, Hugo looks at the clocks, and worries about when they will stop working. He knows that the Station Inspector will come after him as soon as he notices the clocks are not working properly. When he has a free moment, Hugo shows Isabelle the windup toy he repaired. Isabelle tells Hugo that Georges must like him because he kept the toy.
At this point, Hugo is more concerned with helping Georges than he is with his own safety. Both Georges health and the situation with the Station Inspector are urgent, but he chooses to help Georges and Isabelle anyway. Hugo cares about Georges, and, given the presence of the windup toy, it seems Georges cares about Hugo as well.
Themes
Then, Hugo and Isabelle have a conversation about the purpose of machines and humans. They decide all machines have a purpose and it is sad when they stop working because that means they are purposeless. Hugo thinks the same thing can be said of humans. Without purpose, life becomes dull and depressing. Isabelle wonders if that is what has happened to Georges. Hugo hopes that a visit from Monsieur Tabard and Etienne will help Georges get his purpose back.
This scene distills one of the book’s main themes into a few tidy lines. Everyone in the story longs for a purpose and thrives when they have one. Hugo loves his life the most when he is working with clocks and playing with his deck of cards. Meanwhile, it seems Georges felt most alive when working on his films. However, when Georges’s films were taken away from him, he became a broken man, just like his automaton.
Themes
After work, Hugo takes Isabelle up to the top of the train station’s clocktower and they look out over Paris. The city is lit up against the evening sky, though everything looks small because Hugo and Isabelle are so high up. While looking out at the city, Hugo tells Isabelle that the whole world is one large machine, and each person has their own purpose, which helps it run. Hugo and Isabelle love standing in the clocktower together, and neither wants the moment to end.
Hugo organizes his philosophical understanding of the world by grounding it in the objects he loves. Despite all that he has been through, Hugo has a positive outlook on the world, as he feels that everyone has a purpose that will make them happy. Like the automaton, he believes that everyone can be repaired again, even Georges.
Themes
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