Breakfast on Pluto

The novel takes its title from a Don Partridge song “Breakfast on Pluto,” written in 1969. Braden quotes the song while describing the story of his conception at the hands of the lecherous Father Bernard and again when he falls in love with Brendan Cleeve. Braden finds in the song the idea of limitless freedom and traveling beyond the known and familiar: “You could be a dandelion seed floating out across with the world” (25). Pluto, for Braden, comes to symbolize the notion that he can escape the harshness of reality and rise above the mundane, the troublesome, and the dangerous and float away to unite with universe, which suits his high-spirited character. McCabe bookends the novel with quotations from the song to reinforce the meaning of the symbol.

Braden refers to traveling through universe several times in the novel. A particularly effective example occurs when Braden remembers his foster mother and the way she lit pieces of paper, sending them flying “as far as Pluto or wherever else they wanted to go” (106). Similarly, when Braden reunites with his mother in fantasy, they abandon Earth, catapulted by the sheer joy of their companionship. The idea of the endlessness of the universe and the distance of Pluto—then known as the furthest planet in the solar system—from Earth appeals to Braden because they represent the idea of a fantastic life far outside of the terrible stresses he experiences in reality.