The Celestial Omnibus

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911

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Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

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Symbols & Motifs

The Celestial Omnibus

The titular omnibus is both a symbol of and an allegory for creating and consuming art. The horse-drawn carriage is driven by and ferries living passengers to deceased literary figures—real and fictional. While the boy engages with these figures and enjoys various sights during his two rides, Mr. Bons fails to see anything of value and prefers the familiar comfort of London. Thus, the omnibus is a test in which true artists open themselves to new experiences—and are rewarded with the fantastical. Being young and open to learning, the boy enjoys the journey on the omnibus as much as its destination. By contrast, Mr. Bons fixates on the pedigree of the omnibus’s driver, 13th-century Italian author Dante Alighieri, and thus is blind to Dante’s warning and everything else outside the omnibus.

Sunset and Sunrise

The motifs of sunset and sunrise recur throughout the short story. Early on, the boy fondly studies his neighborhood and notes the class discrepancies between the houses’ façades. However, he credits the sunset with obscuring “the inequalities of rent” and promising “something just a little different” (Paragraph 1.15). The sunset does away with classism, while underscoring the boy’s capacity for artistic thought—the opposite of Mr. Bons’s intellectual elitism.

As stated on its advertisement, the omnibus departs at both sunrise and sunset. When the boy aims for a sunrise departure, he is met with an empty alley. However, he realizes the sun “would not rise for two minutes” and resolves to “give the bus every chance” (Paragraph 1.24). As soon as the sun appears, so does the omnibus, rewarding the boy for his faith. Later, when Mr. Bons joins the boy to catch the sunset departure, the omnibus appears promptly yet again. As E. M. Forster allegorizes the omnibus as the artistic process, its association with the cycle of sunrise and sunset suggests true art is everlasting.

John Keats’s Sonnet “To Homer”

When the boy returns from his first trip on the omnibus, he is met with his parents’ wrath. To punish him, they require him to read and recite poetry: He reads aloud John Keats’s sonnet “To Homer” to his parents and Mr. Bons. John Keats was a Romantic poet and contemporary of Percy Bysshe Shelley. His sonnet “To Homer” is addressed to Greek poet Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey: In it, the speaker lauds Homer’s rich imagery despite having once been blind to it.

The sonnet symbolizes the boy’s transformative experience aboard the omnibus, while underscoring the intellectual differences that estrange his parents and Mr. Bons. The boy’s parents laugh at the sonnet’s first line—“Standing aloof in giant ignorance”—and dismiss poetry as self-indulgent. Mr. Bons guides the boy through the rest of the sonnet, to boast his supposedly superior intellect. The boy himself exclaims, “[A]ll these words only rhymed before, now that I’ve come back, they’re me” (Paragraph 3.16). Unlike the adults around him, the young boy is earnest in his appreciation for art and exhibits intuitive understanding of literature.

Mr. Bons’s Vellum Books

When the boy and Mr. Bons encounter 13th-century Italian author Dante Alighieri, Mr. Bons prompts the boy to recall “the vellum books in [his] library, stamped with red lilies” (Paragraph 3.42)—authored by Dante. Vellum is a type of parchment made from calfskin, and its popularity in bookbinding peaked during the medieval era. For example, it was used to bind Gregorian manuscripts in the 15th-16th centuries. In the Modern era, vellum is considered costly, finicky, and suitable only for important documents. This exclusivity symbolizes Mr. Bons’s relative wealth and sense of intellectual elitism. Similarly, the inflexibility of bound vellum hints at his inability to absorb the omnibus’s lessons, or apply his knowledge to an organic artistic process. At the story’s end, he appeals to Dante by reminding him, “I have bound you in vellum” (Paragraph 3.82). In confusing expensive bookbinding for artistic experience, Mr. Bons epitomizes his defining flaw.