58 pages • 1 hour read
Hello, Universe
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Folk Tales and Dreams
Folk tales and dreams feature prominently in Hello, Universe. Both offer a symbolic way to access the hopes and fears of the book’s characters. Lola is the family purveyor of folk talks. Aside from her Filipino stories in which children frequently get eaten by crocodiles, she also introduces Virgil to the giant bird of prey known as Pah, the mystical land of Bali, and Ruby San Salvador, the girl who didn’t know her destiny.
In addition to her folk tales, Lola has two prophetic dreams that have a bearing on Virgil’s future. In one, she sees a lonely boy eaten by a large stone, which presages Virgil’s trip down the well. In another dream, Lola sees a giant red tree that eats a boy named Amado. She then tells Virgil to beware the color red. This dream foretells her grandson’s encounter with the red-shirted Chet in the woods.
Valencia is also plagued by a recurring nightmare. She witnesses a solar eclipse, after which everyone around her disappears. This dream reveals Valencia’s sense of isolation and impels her to consult Kaori for the first time, thus establishing the beginning of their friendship.
Although Virgil doesn’t have any dreams, his memories of Lola’s folk tales color his time at the bottom of the well as he lapses between illusion and reality. Both Ruby and Pah appear in Virgil’s thoughts as he tries to come to grips with his dire situation. Pah represents his all-consuming fear, and Ruby embodies his glimmer of hope.
The Tools of Magic
One of the principal themes of Hello, Universe is that benevolent cosmic forces are constantly at work intervening in human affairs. However, in order to understand the universe and communicate with it, magic is required. Kaori travels confidently in the metaphysical realm to find answers for her clients, but she needs to rely on special objects and rituals to accomplish these feats. Because Kaori is a resourceful twelve-year-old, she uses everyday objects as the bridge between the mystical and the mundane.
With sticks of burning incense and a zodiac rug, she transforms her bedroom into something calls the “spirit chamber.” She tacks up a wall poster of constellations and uses it for astrological divination. She instructs Virgil to bring her five rocks to perform a ritual that will allow him to connect with Valencia. The ingredients she needs for a locator spell in the woods are some of her mother’s matches, a household candle, and a snakeskin agate. Failing the last ingredient, she substitutes a pillowcase stained with snake venom.
For her more serious problems, she consults her magical crystals. These are decorative colored glass pebbles that Kaori bought at a garage sale. In her hands, they become tools of divination. She says of them, “The secrets of the universe buried themselves in unusual and beautiful objects such as these, and only a select few could pull those secrets out” (170). Just as Kaori is able to glimpse the hand of the universe in what other people call coincidence, she is able to transform garden pebbles into crystal balls. She is the conduit of connection between Virgil and Valencia, breaking through both of their shells of silence.
Animals
A variety of creatures appear in Hello, Universe. They can be viewed as emissaries of the universe itself, and they function to drive the plot forward in a number of ways. Virgil’s guinea pig, Gulliver, is the entire reason that Virgil ends up at the bottom of a well. Virgil proves that he’s a true hero by risking his own life to save his pet.
The first sign of a potential connection between Virgil and Valencia is their shared love of guinea pigs. Valencia even names her pet “Lilliput” after the little people in Gulliver’s Travels. She extends her liking for guinea pigs to rodents in general by her observation of the squirrels in the woods. Her journal is full of commentary about their habits. In those same woods, Valencia feeds a stray dog named Sacred. The dog repays her kindness by attaching himself to Virgil as a sort of guardian. Part of the reason that Virgil is able to intimidate Chet is because Sacred is standing next to him.
Snakes are principally associated with Chet as part of his futile attempt to capture one in the woods. That Chet is completely out of touch with the universe and its animals is evident by the awkward method he uses to catch the snake. He grasps its tail, which is the surest way to get bitten. Because he never bothers to learn any snake lore, as Valencia has done, he has no idea how to handle one, how to recognize the type of snake that bit him, or even how to dress his wound afterward. However, if Chet had never entered the woods in search of snakes, Virgil would never have ended up at the bottom of the well. Even villains have their uses in fulfilling the universe’s grand plan.
Unlock all 58 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Erin Entrada Kelly
