Flora And Ulysses

The possibility of the impossible brings characters together and reignites hope. In the beginning, Flora is a cynic who finds the world a generally distasteful place. In the wake of her parents’ divorce, she relies on practical thinking to navigate her world. Still, she copes with life’s lows by reading comic books. In particular, Flora loves comics about her favorite superhero, The Amazing Incandesto. Alfred T. Slipper is a janitor who transforms into Incandesto and helps those in need, shedding “light into the darkest corners of the universe” (35-36). When Flora rescues a squirrel from a vacuum cleaner, he demonstrates super strength and understands human speech. Against all odds, she’s certain the squirrel is a superhero, and names him Ulysses, in homage to the Greek hero Odysseus, who overcame impossible feats.

Ulysses soon proves he can do more than just lift heavy objects and understand Flora: He can also fly and write poetry. He loves Flora, and she him. Flora believes in Ulysses, the miraculous nature of how he came to be (one akin to a superhero origin story), and what he can offer the world (joy and poetry), as her cynicism begins to fade to “a shiver of belief, of possibility” (79).

As Flora spends time with Ulysses, seemingly impossible things start to happen. First, she formally meets neighbor Tootie and her great-nephew William, who become unexpected friends whom she can trust and rely on. William is a skeptic who approaches the world with scientific reasoning and logic, with which Ulysses’s powers do not align. He initially tries to explain these powers, but eventually links them to “the random and confusing nature of the universe” (79). This very randomness means anything can happen. No longer a cynic, Flora tells William not to doubt Ulysses, remembering how Alfred T. Slipper was doubted by many as well.

Ulysses’s sudden flight leads to another profound change when Flora’s father smiles and laughs at the sight. Flora has only known her father to be sad since the divorce, so seeing him in this state moves her:

“[…] everything to do with Ulysses had affected him differently. It had cheered him up somehow, maybe because the holy-bagumba-ness of it all had reminded him of Incandesto and Dolores [Incandesto’s parakeet] and, also, of the possibility of impossible things” (171).

When Ulysses injures himself flying into a glass door, Flora worries he may be seriously hurt and seeks the help of her father’s neighbor, Dr. Meescham. Dr. Meescham turns out to be a philosopher, not a medical doctor, but she helps Flora using the wisdom she does have. Flora meets Dr. Meescham again while searching for the kidnapped Ulysses, and wonders about the principle of magical thinking. She thinks back on advice from her comic books and remembers “It was dangerous to allow yourself to believe that what you said directly influenced the universe. But sometimes it did, didn’t it?” (199). In this moment, she allows herself to believe in the impossible, no matter the odds of finding Ulysses. As it turns out, Ulysses found his way to Dr. Meescham’s window earlier—and the pair reunite.

Dr. Meescham believes that anything is possible, and she has held onto this way of thinking since childhood. She tells Flora about her days as a child, and how she would always leave the window open in case something wonderful happened. Dr. Meescham also tells Flora that “cynics are people who are afraid to believe” (129), and she does not believe Flora to be a cynic because Flora believes in Ulysses. She finds great joy in Ulysses’s existence, and does not doubt him because “there is much more beauty in the world if [she] believe[s] such a thing is possible” (130). This belief in the impossible, big and small, is what reframes the Buckmans’ conflict as something that can be overcome with communication. With the universe being as random as it is, Ulysses’s existence and the family’s reconciliation are very much within the realm of possibility for the novel.