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Chapter 14: New Beginnings
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Night, Mr. Tom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Biological Family vs. Chosen Family
Civilians in Wartime
Grief and Healing
Talent and Community
Religion
Summary
Analysis
Tom and Willie ride into town. Though Tom asked Willie’s mother to come to Little Weirwold, she insisted that Willie come to her. Tom talked to the Billeting Officer about it, but Willie’s mother has a “legal right” to him. At the rail station, Tom asks Willie to write and warns him that his mother may want to keep him. As the train arrives, Tom tells Willie to keep drawing and let Tom know if he needs pencils. They admit they’ll miss each other.
Willie’s mother has a “legal right” to Willie even though Tom has been a far superior parent, which illustrates the limitations of merely legal or biological definitions of family. Meanwhile, Tom’s parting encouragement of Willie’s drawing emphasizes how he has supported Willie’s talents in a way Willie’s mother has not.
Themes
A young soldier on the train tells Tom they’ll take care of Willie. On the train, the soldier asks Willie his name and destination. When Willie says he’s going to London, the soldier realizes he’s an evacuee and asks whether he missed home. Willie shrugs. When the soldier asks whether the old man at the station was Willie’s grandfather, Willie says the man was “Mister Tom” and looks as though he might cry. The soldier, knowing to change the subject, asks after Willie’s parents. When Willie shares that he has no father, the solider asks what Willie’s mother is like. All Willie can really remember about his mother is her dark hair.
Presumably Willie almost cries when he says “Mister Tom” because he is sad to be leaving Tom and Little Weirwold to visit his abusive mother. Yet he may also be crying because he has no legal or biological relationship to Tom—he can’t answer “yes” when the soldier asks whether Tom is his grandfather—and so feels that he lacks a claim on the most supportive adult in his life. Willie’s inability to remember his mother, meanwhile, hints that he may have repressed his memories of her due to the trauma of her abuse.
Themes
The soldier asks what Willie has in his bags. Willie says he has gifts, books, and things for drawing. The soldier, noting Willie’s happy look at the thought of drawing, asks to see his work. Willie hands over his sketch pad. The soldier exclaims at Willie’s skill and says that Willie’s mother must be proud. When Willie admits that his mother hasn’t seen his drawings, the soldier assures him that she will be proud when she does. Willie tries to imagine his mother but ends up picturing a hybrid of Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Hartridge. Then, remembering his mother’s illness, he imagines her professing love for and pride in him on her deathbed. Exhausted, he falls asleep.
The soldier, knowing nothing about Willie’s mother, naturally assumes that she will be supportive of Willie’s artistic talent. This assumption indicates the strangeness and cruelty of the actual lack of support and encouragement Willie received prior to his time with Tom. When Willie tries to picture his mother, he ends up imagining George’s mother Mrs. Fletcher and his kind teacher Mrs. Hartridge—which indicates both that he still wants a loving mother and that he has been subconsciously replacing his own abusive mother with various Little Weirwold women in that role.
Themes
The soldier wakes Willie when the train stops in London. A ticket man asks for Willie’s address—and is caught off guard when Willie shows it to him. Willie explains that he’s visiting his sick mother. The ticket man asks whether she or the warden will pick him up. When Willie admits he doesn’t know, the ticket man suggests they look for the warden. Suddenly, Willie sees a very thin woman and recognizes his mother. He runs to her, yelling “Mum.” At first, not recognizing him, she tells him that she won’t give him any money—but then, shocked, she realizes this healthy-looking, well-dressed boy is her son.
In England during World War II, “wardens” were members of a set of organizations called the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services that helped respond to German bombings. The wardens helped guide, evacuate, and rescue other civilians during bombings. The ticket man’s suggestion that Willie use his neighborhood’s warden to help find his mother shows the importance of civilian defense organizations to London during World War II. Meanwhile, when Willie’s mother doesn’t immediately recognize him, it shows how much healthier he has become under Tom’s care.
Themes
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Willie tells his mother that he’s glad to see her and mentions his drawings. She is perturbed by his strong voice and his “peculiar mixture of accents.” When she mentions that she wasn’t expecting him to have changed, Willie is surprised: he feels like himself, whereas she seems different. Noticing a bag at her feet, he offers to carry it and reaches for it. She knocks his hand away, saying she’ll tell him if she wants him to do something. He apologizes. Hopelessly, he starts to think about Mrs. Fletcher’s kindness but stops himself.
When Willie mentions his drawings shortly after reuniting with his mother, it suggests that the soldier’s encouragement has made him hopeful that his art will win him love and approval from his mother. Unfortunately, her immediate dislike of his “peculiar mixture of accents” hints that she doesn’t like the rural speech patterns he has picked up in Little Weirwold—or, implicitly, the freer and happier behavioral patterns he has picked up there. Her immediate cruelty makes him think of Mrs. Fletcher’s kindness, showing how Willie’s exposure to good mothers has started to help him realize that his mother is cruel and abusive.
Themes
Willie’s mother, Mrs. Beech, decides to go easy on Willie for now. She tells him that he can take his bag and suggests they get tea. When he thanks her and smiles, she’s alarmed. He has never smiled at her before. It feels like a challenge to “her authority.” In a café, they drink tea, and Willie explains that the villagers sent her presents. When Mrs. Beech says that she doesn’t need charity, Willie says it isn’t charity but gifts for healing, like warm clothes and food.
Willie’s mother, Mrs. Beech, interprets her son smiling at her as a challenge to “her authority.” This disturbing reaction suggests that Mrs. Beech believes she only has adequate control over her son when he is frightened and miserable.
Themes
When Willie mentions that Nancy Little sent “tonic wine,” Mrs. Beech expresses horror, asking whether Willie has been drinking. Willie explains that tonic wine has iron in it, for strength, and that Nancy is married to Dr. Little. Mrs. Beech suggests that Dr. Little isn’t a “real doctor.” When Willie insists that he is, Mrs. Beech is utterly shocked that he’s disagreed with her. She says it appears Tom hasn’t “frighten[ed] some goodness” into Willie as she’d hoped.
A “tonic wine” is a fortified wine with additives. Mrs. Beech’s strange assumption that the “tonic wine”—a gift for her—means her young son has been drinking shows her paranoia. When she associates “goodness” in Willie with never contradicting her, it illustrates how she has taught Willie to conflate religious and moral goodness with total obedience to her whims.
Themes
Fearfully, Mrs. Beech asks whether Tom is really religious. Willie reminds her that he wrote in his letters that Tom took care of church grounds. She accuses Willie of lying, saying that the letters weren’t from him. When Willie says he has learned to write, with help from Tom and Miss Thorne, Mrs. Beech suggests that Willie must have wasted many people’s time and that the villagers are probably happy he’s gone. After hesitating, Willie asserts that the villagers like him—an assertion that makes him feel better. She tells him that the villagers were only being polite: believing otherwise is “the sin of pride.” Willie feels baffled, as if he’s losing touch with reality.
Mrs. Beech is attempting to undermine Willie’s sense of reality by telling him that the Little Weirwold villagers didn’t really care about him and that believing otherwise is a “sin of pride.” She is not only contradicting his lived experience—she is also telling him that he is committing sins if he continues to believe in the truth of that experience. That is, she is psychologically and emotionally abusing Willie while pretending to give him religious guidance.
Themes
Mrs. Beech, calling her son “Willie,” suggests that they stop the conversation rather than fight on Willie’s first night back. Willie agrees but realizes that the villagers have only called him “Will” or William” for the past six months. He feels as though he is both “Willie” and “Will,” but his mother will reject the latter part of him. When she calls him “Willie,” he doesn’t “feel real.” She gives Willie a frightening fake smile and says she has a surprise for him—but no one can see him enter her house. When he asks why, her smile wavers. Then she tells him that’s part of the surprise. Willie nods, insisting to himself that he isn’t nauseated—he’s not sick, she is.
The narrator has called William Beech “Willie” up to this point, but the Little Weirwold villagers call him “Will” or “William.” Willie’s different names represent different facets of his identity: Mrs. Beech’s biological son (Willie), Zach’s best friend (Will), Mrs. Hartridge’s student (William), and so on. When he feels that his mother won’t recognize the “Will” and “William” parts of him, he is sensing that she dislikes the energy, independence, and happiness the support of the Little Weirwold community has brought out in him. Mrs. Beech’s fake smile and Willie’s repressed nausea foreshadow that Mrs. Beech’s “surprise” will be something terrible.
Themes
Willie and Mrs. Beech exit the café and catch a bus. The bus conductress—the first woman Willie has ever seen working on a bus—asks Willie whether he missed London while he was in the country. Then she asks Mrs. Beech whether she missed her son. Mrs. Beech fakes a smile, puts an arm around Willie and says that he’s “all [she’s] got.” The conductress says that she hasn’t sent her own children away, as the war hasn’t seemed to touch London. Willie, sickened by his mother’s touch, wonders whether he really is evil.
Willie has never seen a bus conductress before, which suggests that the woman stepped into the bus conductor’s job because the man who used to work it has left to fight in the war. This small detail shows how the war changed life for civilians—it not only exposed them to violence but also created new opportunities for women. Meanwhile, Mrs. Beech’s false affection for Willie in public, claiming her son is “all [she’s] got,” hints to the reader that she has gotten away with abusing and neglecting him by concealing her behavior from other adults.
Themes
Willie and Mrs. Beech disembark. She sneaks him into the apartment, which reeks. Willie sees a baby girl in a box. Mrs. Beech says the baby is the surprise. Willie whispers “why,” and he notes the tape over the baby’s mouth. Mrs. Beech says that the tape prevents noise: the baby is a secret, a gift from Jesus. Willie realizes it’s the baby that reeks. When she cries, Willie tries to pick her up. Mrs. Beech orders him not to, claiming she’s seeking attention and needs “discipline.” When Willie protests that she’s a baby, Mrs. Beech yells at him. He asks whether the baby has a name. Mrs. Beech says no and threatens to belt him for questioning her.
Mrs. Beech’s disturbing and dangerous behavior—taping a baby’s mouth shut, claiming that the baby needs “discipline,” not changing the baby for so long that she develops a terrible smell, for example—shows that her Willie isn’t the only target of her abuse. Her claim that the baby was a gift from Jesus, meanwhile, suggests that she is engaged in religious hypocrisy—having extramarital sex while imposing extremely conservative interpretations of Christianity on Willie.
Themes
Mrs. Beech asks what’s in Willie’s bags. He takes out his clothes and Bible. She asks whether he’s kept studying his Bible. When he says yes, she orders him to recite Exodus 1:1–6. When he explains that he’s been learning the stories, not memorizing verses, she says that she’s not interested in stories. Then she orders him to open his second bag and asks whether he stole his new clothes. He says no, but she claims he must have begged for them. He offers her her presents, and she tells him he must have begged for those too.
Exodus 1:1–6 comprises a list of the Biblical patriarch Jacob’s descendants in Egypt and a short account of the growing Hebrew immigrant population there. The randomness of the verses that Mrs. Beech demands Willie recite emphasizes the formulaic, discipline-focused nature of her religiosity. By contrast, Tom has been trying to teach Willie the Biblical stories, showing Tom’s focus on meaning and on learning. Mrs. Beech’s insistence that Willie must have begged for his gifts continues her campaign of undermining Willie’s sense of reality: she is trying to convince him that no one really cares about him.
Themes
Willie pulls out his own gift for Mrs. Beech: a drawing of the church and graveyard. She asks whether he stole it. When he explains that he drew it, she calls him a liar. He tries to show her his sketchpad, but she says she has no time for drawings and tells him she hopes no one discovers his crime. When he insists again that he made the drawings, she hits the table and demands his silence, thinking that she’ll have to expend much effort on forcing his “obedience.”
Mrs. Beech accuses Willie of stealing his own drawing—but when he tries to show her evidence proving his innocence, she refuses to look at it. Her indifference to the truth and obsession with Willie’s “obedience” show that she doesn’t care about raising her son to be good—she only cares about controlling him.
Themes
Mrs. Beech asks how he could suppose she’d believe strangers would give him presents. Willie protests that they’re his friends. When Mrs. Beech asks who they are, he mentions Zach, George, and “the twins.” Mrs. Beech asks whether they go to church. Willie says that George, Ginnie, and Carrie do. When Mrs. Beech is angry that Willie has “mix[ed] with girls,” he repeats that all his friends go to church but Zach. She asks why Zach doesn’t go to church. He tries to avoid giving a straight answer but eventually says that Zach is Jewish. She screams and hits him across the face. When he protests that Jesus was Jewish, she calls him a blasphemer and beats him till he dissociates, watching the attack from the outside his body.
Though Mrs. Beech has had a baby outside of marriage that she is now mistreating, she gets angry with her innocent young son simply for having female friends, another detail that shows her religious hypocrisy and her desire to control her son completely. “Blasphemy” is irreverence or scorn directed at God. Jesus was Jewish, though, and pointing this fact out isn’t blasphemy. Mrs. Beech’s violent response to Willie having a Jewish friend and to mentioning Jesus’s Jewishness thus illustrates her antisemitism and her abusiveness.
Themes
When Willie regains consciousness, he discovers that he smells like blood and has been locked in a cupboard under the stairs. Thinking of Tom, Zach, and the baby girl, he feels that he has said goodbye to the “Willie” part of himself—he is now Will. Will momentarily regrets having gone to Little Weirwold, because it revealed to him that his mother was a cruel person. He whispers for “Mister Tom,” curls up, and tries to sleep.
At this point, the narrator begins calling William Beech “Will.” This name change reflects Will’s final rejection of his mother, who calls him “Willie” and who he has belatedly realized is cruel and abusive. In this moment of crisis, Willie whispers for “Mister Tom,” emphasizing that Tom is his chosen parent who represents safety to him.
Themes
