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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hard Work, Perseverance, and Success
Safety and Responsibility
Risk and Reward
The Growth and Development of America
Courage and Grief
Summary
Analysis
Late at night in the dark, Nat struggles to stay awake until his oldest brother, Hab, goes to sleep. He desperately wants to change the family’s bad luck. Nat whispers Hab’s name and Hab asks why Nat won’t go to sleep. Nat answers that he’s thinking about Salem, even though he was too young when the family left four years earlier to remember it. Nat quickly calculates how old each of his siblings was when they moved to Danvers: Mary was nine, Hab was seven, Lizza was four, Nat himself was two, and William wasn’t yet born. This makes Nat chuckle, disturbing Hab’s sleep even more.
From an early age, Nat feels a sense of responsibility for his family’s wellbeing. Their current precarious situation may arise from an outside force—bad luck—but he doesn’t take that as an excuse to not do what he can to change things. And although it will be many years before he achieves success, from its earliest pages, the book points toward the innate mathematical genius that—combined with education, hard work, and perseverance—will bring him success eventually.
Themes
Nat asks Hab to confirm that jingling sliver in one’s pocket by the light of the moon is the luckiest spell possible. Hab agrees, but he points out that a person must have silver for it to work. Nat smiles to himself, because he found a silver shilling that he’s keeping secretly in his pocket. But the next thing he knows, Hab is shaking him awake in the morning. He fell asleep before he could work his good luck charm! He feels so sick over his failure that he can’t eat the breakfast Mother and Granny offer him. He feeds it to younger brother William and baby Samuel instead. When Nat’s sister, Lizza, catches him feeding his breakfast to the babies, he knows she won’t tell on him, because she’s the family’s best secret-keeper. He promises to tell her a big secret when they reach Salem.
Nat feels guilty about missing his spell, because even at the age of six, he feels responsible to look out and care for his family; likewise, when he can’t eat, he makes sure not to waste the food (and by extension the family’s meager financial resources) by feeding it to his younger brothers. During the move from Danvers to Salem, Nat and Lizza rely on each other for moral support, demonstrating the closeness of their relationship. Nat’s responsibility thus exists within the mutual bonds of love and support that characterize his family.
Themes
Although Nat’s great-great-great-grandfather built a big house in the town, his large family moves into a little, rundown cottage. Mother sends Nat to the big house to fetch fire, then Granny sends him out to weed in the yard with Lizza. He tells her about his shilling and the good-luck spell he will use that very night, before the moon phase changes, to improve the family’s fortunes. But a storm whips up clouds after dinner, obscuring the sky. Nat will have to wait for another month. He feels guilty over falling asleep the night before, but he doesn’t let Lizza know. He doesn’t want her to worry, because Father always said that boys should take care of girls and women.
The comparison between Nat’s ancestor’s large, grand house, and the tiny cottage into which his family moved illustrates the lowly starting point of his life. When he achieves success, he will thus illustrate the ideal of the “American Dream,” which says that no matter how lowly, disadvantaged, or poor a person may be, through hard work and perseverance anyone can find success. But, at this still unsuccessful moment in the Bowditch family’s life, Nat feels responsible to care for his family and shoulder as many of its worries as his young body can handle.
Themes
