53 pages • 1-hour read
The One-In-A-Million Boy
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and child death.
Music
Throughout the novel, music acts as a motif in support of The Lasting Influence of Grief. Serving as Quinn’s passion and his burden, music plays a complex role in Quinn’s relationship with his son. In a key flashback, Quinn recalls playing guitar for his infant son and feeling as if he had been “touched by birds as the baby fell finally asleep” (104). However, his son never again responded so positively to his music, and the boy’s failure to appreciate the medium that consumes Quinn’s world became a source of unspoken distance between them as the years went by. Fortunately, Quinn does eventually come to a more nuanced understanding of his son’s perspective, as the boy still affirmed Quinn’s talent by telling him that he played better than the greats. Although Quinn did not immediately appreciate this brief moment of grace and unacknowledged affection, he later realizes that his son was always one of his biggest supporters.
On a more personal level, Quinn plays his guitar, which he acquired in childhood, as a personal form of prayer and a way to process emotions that he otherwise represses. The motif of music extends to Ona’s past as well, given that her husband, Howard, worked in a music store. Ona also has a history of musical associations that commemorate her most important moments, such as the day when Louise taught her how to dance, giving her a rare experience of joy and intimacy with the woman she loved. Finally, in the novel’s climax, Quinn’s band performs Howard’s forgotten song, which has been blended with “Hallelujah,” and Quinn reflects that “decades after the mortal end of his tortured life, Howard Stanhope had risen again to make a thing of beauty” (305). In this way, the novel suggests that music, like memory, resurfaces unexpectedly and provides healing in its own imperfect way.
Language
Language in The One-in-a-Million Boy becomes a symbol of buried identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. As Ona recounts her early life, her Lithuanian begins to return to her in fragments, often triggered by an emotional memory or connection to the boy. The return of her first language is described as “the sweet rain of words soak[ing] through the pocked surface of her life” (292), and this image illustrates the idea that language now comes soaking back into her pores and her very consciousness, reconnecting her to a core self that has long been hidden or forgotten. After viewing her immigration records, Ona remembers that she once had a brother who died during the family’s sea journey to the United States, and this death parallels other losses in the novel. She reflects on the idea that her brother’s body, like the dead soldiers that her son Frankie sent into the sea during the war, was “discarded” in a very similar fashion. These parallel images align linguistic memory with grief and with history itself.
In further support of this idea, Ona imagines a different life in which she spoke the language of her parents, of her past, and this longing makes it clear that memory and identity are intimately connected to language. As Ona receives increasingly intense linguistic flashes and catches glimpses of her native language, these moments deepen her long-neglected connection to her past and her lost family. The act of preserving memories cannot be achieved without language, and even when such memories are incomplete or painful, Ona learns to cherish them all in order to honor the lives of her loved ones and maintain vital connections across generations.
Guinness World Records
The motif of the Guinness World Records functions as a metaphor that illustrates the importance of embracing new possibilities at any age. The emphasis on records can first be seen in the boy’s passion for making lists, the first of which is a list of 10 different birds and their special traits. This introduction illustrates the boy’s methods of interpreting and organizing the world. His fascination with Guinness World Records is a manifestation of his fascination with capturing the extraordinary aspects of ordinary lives. Because he sees Ona herself as possessing “magic,” he encourages her to consider setting a record herself. To this end, he cites Madame Calment, a French woman who lived to be 122. Inspired, Ona realizes that breaking records could be a form of legacy, especially since her children are either dead or estranged. She decides that breaking records will give her something tangible to leave behind. By the novel’s end, she achieves multiple records, showing that attaining personal milestones can offer meaning, closure, and purpose, even late in life.
Birds
Birds function as a central motif in The One-in-a-Million Boy, representing the beauty of music, memories, and the passage of time. The novel’s avian imagery begins with descriptions of Ona’s yard, which features 20 different bird feeders that reflect her connection to life and her attempt to hold onto fleeting beauty. The motif is strengthened by the boy’s habit of recording detailed lists of birds in order to preserve and understand the natural world. Birds also become a shared language between the boy and Ona, who often discuss them, and Ona laments that she can no longer hear so many birdcalls in the upper ranges. This loss of birdsong represents both physical aging and the loss of joy and spontaneity that sets in with time.
In a later anecdote, Ona recalls seeing hundreds of hummingbirds fall out of the sky during a trip to Texas with Louise, and this surreal image haunts her for many years and gains a symbolic link with the eventual loss of this monumental friendship. The avian motif culminates with the boy’s final, unfulfilled wish: to ask his father to lower the pitch of recorded birdcalls so that Ona might hear them again. When the boy goes on his bike on the morning he dies, his mission is to record the birds for Ona, and his dedication to her well-being demonstrates The Life-Changing Power of Unlikely Friendships, reflecting his belief in offering small gestures as profound acts of love.
Magic
Magic in the novel is both literal and metaphorical, capturing the small moments of wonder that define The Life-Changing Power of Unlikely Friendships. Early on, the boy writes in his diary, “Miss Vitkus is EXTREMELY inspiring in her magic powers and AMAZING life events!!!” (8), and it is clear that he sees Ona as someone who is larger than life. Ona’s sleight-of-hand and clever card tricks reappear often as she shares this skill to delight the boy and disconcert Quinn. Notably, magic takes on a deeper resonance for Quinn after his son’s death, especially when he returns to Ona’s house, overwhelmed and broken, and pleads for a magic trick, “desperate to be amazed” (48). This longing for wonder reveals his yearning for healing and for the discovery of something unexplainably good in the face of his loss. However, despite this sudden need, Quinn never saw his son’s magic for what it was. Unlike Ona, who is immediately enchanted by the boy’s list making, kindness, and curiosity, Quinn found his son’s quirks to be “unsettling, even disorienting” (182), and he failed to understand or connect with his son’s way of being. In this context, “magic” is best defined as the capacity to see and understand others who are very different from oneself.
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