Symbols How to End a Love Story Yulin Kuang

The Ouija Board: A Symbol of Grief and Confrontation in How to End a Love Story

What Is the Ouija Board in the Story?

In How to End a Love Story, the Ouija board is a literal board game—a Victorian-era parlor toy marketed as a way to contact spirits. During a writers' retreat at a cabin, the character Owen produces a discounted Halloween version. The group, having consumed several alcoholic drinks, decides to play. The planchette moves under their fingers, answering "Yes" to questions about the presence of ghosts. The scene is playful at first, with jokes about ghost orgies and "hot ghosts." But the mood shifts when Suraya directly asks Helen if she has a ghost to contact—a question that forces the unresolved death of her sister, Michelle, into the open.

Where Does the Ouija Board Appear?

The symbol appears only once, in Chapter 8 (Seven) of the novel. The entire episode unfolds in the cabin’s main room after the team has changed into pajamas and consumed hot toddies. Helen is initially reluctant to join the game, but she remembers Grant’s earlier command to "make more of an effort." She participates, and when the group presses her to ask about her own dead, she freezes. At that critical moment, Grant intervenes: "I’ve got a ghost," he says abruptly, and moves to the board. He asks about his uncle Fred Shepard, who died the previous December, and the planchette begins to spell out "GET" before Owen yanks his hand away, claiming the activity is "too spooky."

This single scene is the only direct use of the Ouija board in the story, but its emotional resonance echoes through later chapters. The board itself is not mentioned again, but the act of trying to communicate with the dead reappears in Helen’s private letter to Michelle in Chapter 33 (Thirty-Two). There, she reflects on whether the dead can hear the living and grapples with the possibility of an afterlife. The board therefore serves as a tangible trigger for a deeper, ongoing meditation on grief.

How the Symbol’s Meaning Shifts

Initially, the Ouija board is treated as a silly bonding game. Characters laugh, make inappropriate jokes, and treat the spirits as entertainment. The planchette’s movement is attributed to unconscious suggestion by the logical character Eve. The symbol carries the connotation of a harmless party trick.

But as soon as Helen’s grief is invoked, the board transforms into a vehicle for confrontation. Helen’s unspoken history—her sister’s suicide and the role Grant played in the accident that killed her—hovers over the scene. Grant’s intervention by redirecting the question to his own uncle is a protective deflection. The board becomes a shield: by asking about his uncle, Grant draws attention away from Helen and offers himself as a target. The symbol shifts from frivolous to sacred, from play to emotional triage.

Later, in the novel’s resolution, Helen and Grant pay respects to Michelle at a shrine with incense, and Helen’s mother articulates a cultural belief that "the living and the dead—we are all still connected." The Ouija board, though absent from those later scenes, prefigures this concept. It represents a desire—however naive or skeptical—to bridge the gap between the living and the dead, a desire that Helen eventually learns to fulfill not through a board game but through remembrance and ritual.

Character Connections

Helen Zhang is the character most haunted by the Ouija board’s implications. She has written a college research paper dismissing the boards as "a slow phone connection to the afterlife," yet she cannot avoid the pull of wanting to speak to Michelle. Her earlier refusal to engage in grief—she spent years avoiding the counselor’s prompt "what would you say to your sister?"—contrasts sharply with the raw pressure she feels during the game. The board forces her to confront the fact that she has not healed.

Grant Shepard uses the board as a redirection tool. Sensing Helen’s discomfort, he inserts himself into the game and deflects attention toward his own loss. This act is significant because Grant has spent years feeling guilty for Michelle’s death; he knows he "should feel a little guilty forever." By volunteering a question about his uncle, he publicly shoulders vulnerability, showing that he is willing to expose his own pain to protect Helen’s privacy. It is a turning point in their relationship—the first moment of mutual understanding, albeit mediated through a séance.

The other characters—Suraya, Owen, Nicole, Tom, Saskia, Eve—remain largely oblivious to the subtext. They treat the episode as entertainment, which heightens the isolation of both Helen and Grant. The board symbolically separates the two grieving protagonists from the rest of the group, marking their shared secret.

Theme Connections

The Ouija board connects directly to the novel's central themes:

  • Complicated Grief: The board represents the desire to maintain a link with the deceased that conventional mourning does not permit. Helen’s grief over Michelle is complicated by her guilt, anger, and unresolved love. The board offers a fantasy of direct communication that her rational mind rejects, yet her emotions crave.

  • Guilt and Forgiveness: Grant’s deflection with his uncle is an act of self-sacrifice. He takes on the role of the one who "deserves" to be haunted, offering himself as a stand-in for Helen’s pain. The scene underscores how both characters must learn to forgive themselves before they can forgive each other.

  • Intimacy and Vulnerability: The Ouija session is the first time Grant and Helen share an emotional secret in front of others. Though they do not speak directly about Michelle, the exchange of unspoken understanding deepens their connection. Later that same night, a sleeping-arrangement mistake leads to Helen having an erotic dream while wrapped in Grant’s comforter—a direct progression from emotional intimacy to physical desire.

  • Professional Boundaries vs. Personal Connection: The writers’ retreat is meant to be a professional bonding exercise, but the Ouija board dismantles those boundaries. It forces the personal into the professional sphere, setting the stage for the later romance that blurs work and private life.

  • Family Expectations and Cultural Identity: Helen’s mother later describes the Chinese practice of honoring ancestors—"the living and the dead—we are all still connected." The Ouija board is a Western approximation of that idea, and the novel subtly contrasts the game’s superficial appropriation with the genuine, ritualized connection that Helen learns to embrace by the end.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Grant redirect the Ouija board question away from Helen’s sister to his own uncle?
Grant sees Helen’s visible discomfort when Suraya asks if Helen has a ghost to contact. He knows that the group is unaware of the tragic connection between Helen and himself—that he accidentally killed her sister, Michelle. By offering his own recent loss (his uncle Fred), he draws attention to himself and spares Helen the pain of speaking about Michelle in a casual setting. His quick intervention shows both his protective instincts and his own unfinished grief.

2. How does Helen’s academic knowledge of Ouija boards influence her reaction to the game?
Helen recalls a college research paper in which she dismissed Ouija boards as "a slow phone connection to the afterlife." This intellectual stance gives her a sense of superiority, but it also allows her to participate without fully believing. Yet when the game becomes personal, her rationality crumbles. The contrast between her earlier skepticism and her emotional vulnerability during the scene highlights how unresolved grief can overrule logic.

3. In what way does the Ouija board scene foreshadow the novel’s resolution regarding Helen’s relationship with Michelle’s memory?
The scene raises the question of whether the dead can communicate with the living—a question that Helen never fully answers. By the end of the novel, she writes a letter to Michelle (in Chapter 33) and later participates in a ritual at the shrine with incense. She does not receive a supernatural reply, but she accepts that connection can be maintained through memory, love, and ritual. The Ouija board thus contrasts the false promise of instant contact with the hard-won reality of ongoing remembrance.

4. Why does Owen stop the game when the planchette begins to spell "GET"?
Owen is already uneasy with the group’s eagerness to contact spirits. He admits the activity is "too spooky" and interrupts before the word can be completed. His reaction reflects a common fear of the unknown—the possibility that a game might yield a real, unwanted message. On a narrative level, the interruption leaves the message ambiguous, mirroring the characters’ incomplete grieving processes. Neither Helen nor Grant has fully processed their losses; the incomplete word symbolizes stalled emotional work.