“There is just no predicting what kind of sentence you might say.”

The Power of Words is a central theme of Flora and Ulysses, which is evident within the first few pages. Here, Flora thinks about the fact that life is amazingly unpredictable, that people sometimes experience or say things they never expected: In this quote, she is yelling at her neighbor Tootie, warning her that she is about to vacuum a squirrel.

“It was as if the several doors in the dark room of his self (doors which he hadn’t even known existed) had suddenly been flung wide. Everything was shot through with meaning, purpose, light.”

After Ulysses is sucked up by Tootie’s vacuum and saved by Flora, he finds that he is no longer an ordinary squirrel. Everything seems more meaningful, beautiful, and important than it was before. As Ulysses develops a bond with Flora, he comes to love the world for all its joys and flaws, illustrating the novel’s theme, Becoming Illuminated.

“Alfred sheds light into the darkest corners of the universe. He can fly. Also, he visits the elderly. And that’s what a superhero is. And I think you might be one, too.”

Alfred T. Slipper is Flora’s fictional hero. When Alfred isn’t helping people as Incandesto, he is a janitor whose only loyal companion is his bird, Dolores. Flora knows a great deal about superheroes from reading Incandesto comics, and is certain that she’s found a real-life version of Incandesto in Ulysses. Incandesto is an embodiment of the novel’s theme,