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Chapter 21: Back to School
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
Will avoids the Littles’ house and puts papers on Zach’s desk at school to make it look like he’s still there. During his art lessons with Geoffrey, he admits that he feels emotionally empty, though he can ignore his grief when he focuses on drawing still lives. For the next four months, more and more London evacuees come to the village. In December, Tom and Will make toys for poor and orphaned children, which Will throws himself into as a distraction from his grief. Tom is patient with Will’s silence and withdrawal. He expects that later, Will will truly grieve Zach.
Like Tom grieving for Rachel or Geoffrey grieving for his dead loved ones, Will initially reacts to Zach’s death with denial and avoidance. Tom’s patience with Will’s withdrawal illustrates both Tom’s love for Will and his experiential knowledge that Will is having a common initial reaction to a loved one’s death.
Themes
Carrie is also grieving Zach, who helped her feel less like “an odd fish.” At high school, “posh” girls mock her for her rural accent, while at home, her mother tells her she’s starting to sound “la-di-da.” She feels accepted nowhere—and whenever she tries to talk about Zach with Will, he cuts her off, increasing her “loneliness.”
“Odd fish” is an idiom used to describe someone that most people find strange. Carrie believes that the “posh” (higher-class) girls at school think she’s strange because of her accent, while her mother thinks she’s strange because she’s working to hone her academic talents and starting to sound “la-di-da” (stuck up). In contrast with Carrie’s new classmates and her mother, Zach always supported Carrie’s ambitions, so his loss feels particularly sharp to her. Yet whereas Carrie wants to grieve Zach by talking about him, Will is still in the avoidance stage of grief. Thus, Carrie has lost both her most supportive friend and the friend who can best understand that loss.
Themes
In January, Will finally comes to terms with Zach’s death. One day, when he walks to his art lesson with Geoffrey, Geoffrey asks what work he’s brought, and an embarrassed Will can only show him a single drawing of “a chewed-up bone in one of Tom's slippers.” Geoffrey puts a photo of two laughing young men on the mantelpiece and tells Will to draw it. Will, seeing that one of the men is Geoffrey, asks who the other is. Geoffrey explains that it’s his best friend, a sculptor who was killed in the war and whose pipe he is currently smoking. Geoffrey says that smoking the pipe renders his friend “a little alive” for him and asks whether Will understands. Will, who has hidden Zach’s cartoon and his Shakespeare, doesn’t.
Readers can assume that the “chewed-up bone” belongs to Sammy the dog, yet in the context of Will’s overwhelming grief, his single drawing of a bone suggests his preoccupation with death. When Geoffrey says that using his friend’s pipe makes his friend “a little alive,” it suggests that remembering the dead can bring them closer to their living loved ones and ease the pain of grief. Because Will is still trying to avoid his pain entirely by avoiding reminders of Zach, he doesn’t yet understand the benefits of remembering the dead.
Themes
When Will tries to draw the photo, his hands start shaking. He remembers Zach riding his bright bicycle with his hands in the air. After three hours, he has drawn almost nothing. Geoffrey tells him he can stop, warms up some muffins for them, and plays on his gramophone the music that was playing when Will and Zach first came to the cottage. Will, staring hard at the fire to avoid crying, suddenly feels as though Zach is beside him, excited and fidgeting while Will is still. Geoffrey’s photo suddenly reminds him of a photo of himself and Zach from Salt-on-the Mouth. When the recording ends, Will blurts that he has to leave—and Geoffrey tells him, “Better to accept than pretend he never existed.”
In earlier scenes, Zach’s bicycle seemed to represent his and Will’s friendship, in particular how that friendship helped Will heal from the trauma of his mother’s abuse. In this scene, it stands in for all the memories of Zach and his friendship that Will has been repressing. Having accessed memories of Zach on his bicycle, Will feels suddenly, painfully aware of Zach’s phantom presence. Will wants to flee this presence because he fears his own grief. Yet when Geoffrey tells him, “Better to accept than pretend he never existed,” it suggests that the benefits of remembering Zach will outweigh Will’s pain at acknowledging Zach’s death.
Themes
Get the entire Good Night, Mr. Tom LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rather than go home, Will flees into the woods. When he feels Zach near him, he tells Zach he’s not there and never will be. He begins smashing branches, enraged at Zach for dying and abandoning him. Then he yells that he hates God. He screams until he collapses. Eventually, he falls asleep on the ground. When he wakes, he trudges back to the cottage, where Tom is waiting. Seeing Will’s dirty, “tearstain[ed]” appearance, Tom leads Will gently into the cottage. Will, calling Tom “Dad,” apologizes for making him anxious but explains that he needed to be alone. After Will goes to bed, Tom processes that Will called him “Dad.” Though he cries, he also feels overjoyed.
Zach is simultaneously there and not there for Will: he is present in Will’s memory, yet he’ll never be physically present to Will again. Will finds his dead friend’s paradoxical presence and absence so painful that he declares he hates God—a very serious declaration from a boy who was raised by an abusively strict and religious mother. When Will tells Tom that he needed to be alone, it echoes Geoffrey’s claim that he needed to withdraw from society for a while after his parents’ and fiancée’s deaths. This parallel again suggests that withdrawal from society is a natural part of the grieving process and only becomes unhealthy if it goes on too long. Will, in a state of emotional openness caused by his outburst of grief, calls Tom “Dad” for the first time—showing his love for and acceptance of his adoptive father. Being called “Dad” both fills Tom with joy and makes him cry. While Tom may simply out of an excess of feeling, he may be having a mixed or bittersweet reaction to becoming Will’s “Dad” due to his longstanding grief over his infant son’s death long ago.
Themes
Nancy Little opens her door to find Will, much to her surprise. She offers him “mulled wine”—and then cuts herself off, as that was Zach’s joking name for blackcurrant juice. Will accepts the juice. Nancy tells Will that they’ve missed him and that she left Zach’s room untouched for when Will wants to look at it. Then Will asks whether he can ride Zach’s bicycle. Astonished, Nancy agrees but comments that she didn’t know will could ride a bicycle. Will admits that he can’t, but he plans to learn. Nancy gets the bicycle and helps Will put it in working order. To Will, repairing the bicycle feels “like touching a part of Zach.” When they finish, Will wheels the bicycle away.
When Will takes the “mulled wine” rather than avoid the reminder of Zach, it implies that Will has come to the Littles’ house to confront his memories and his grief. This implication is confirmed when he asks to ride Zach’s bicycle, which represents his friendship with and memories of Zach. By learning to ride Zach’s bicycle, Will is symbolically learning to remember Zach with love rather than avoiding reminders of him. Will’s sense that using the bicycle is “like touching a part of Zach” adds to this symbolism.
Themes
Will tries to remain inconspicuous—he’s skipping school for the first time ever. As he wheels the bicycle through the village, Miss Thorne spots him from the school building, but she stays silent. When Will finds a smooth bit of road far from the cottages, he gets on the bicycle and tries to teach himself to ride it. Though he falls over repeatedly, he keeps at it. He remembers Tom’s saying: “everythin’ ‘as its own time.” Yet he feels impatient, perhaps due to the intensity of the bicycle’s colors or the fact that it belonged to Zach.
The phrase “everythin’ ‘as its own time” recurs throughout the novel. Here, it literally refers to the time it takes to learn to ride a bicycle. Yet it figuratively refers to the time that Will’s personal grieving process for Zach will take. Thus, Will’s attempts to ride the bicycle come to symbolize his desire to come to terms with his painful yet loving memories of Zach.
Themes
When Will at last rides the bicycle, he feels as though Zach is “inside him and very much alive.” He feels intensely excited and yells “Yippee! Callooh! Callay!” and “Wizzo.” He pauses at the top of a hill and tells himself that Zach’s essence isn’t truly dead, because he still remembers Zach and can speak with him in his mind. He asks Zach what he should do, and answers in the persona of Zach that he should go visit Mrs. Hartridge. Then—still as Zach—he congratulates himself for learning to ride the bicycle.
When Will manages to ride the bicycle, he feels that Zach is living “inside him.” Though Zach is not literally “very much alive,” his loving friendship continues to affect Will through Will’s memories of him. The passage emphasizes Zach’s continuing influence on Will through Will’s use of Zach’s slangy exclamations like “Callooh!” and “Wizzo!” When Will-as-Zach congratulates himself for learning to ride the bicycle, meanwhile, it suggests that Will remembers how Zach supported him in developing his talent for art and acting and will use memories of Zach to encourage himself in the future.
Themes
Still as Zach, Will knocks forcefully on Mrs. Hartridge’s door. She opens it, crying but also sort of laughing, and tells him that her husband is alive as a prisoner of war in Germany. Then, taking in Will’s dirty feet and minor abrasions, she asks what he’s been doing. When Will says that he’s been teaching himself to ride Zach’s bicycle, Mrs. Hartridge pauses, astonished. Then she asks whether he stayed on. He says, “Eventually.” Mrs. Hartridge is about to comment that he’s acting a bit like Zach, with Zach’s “extrovert air,” but she stops herself.
The novel parallels Will’s recovery of his positive memories of Zach through bicycling with Mrs. Hartridge’s discovery that her husband is a POW, not dead. This parallel suggests that Will has just learned that Zach’s spirit isn’t figuratively dead in the same way that Mrs. Hartridge has just learned her husband isn’t literally dead. The novel emphasizes that Zach lives on through his influence on Will when Mrs. Hartridge notices Will assuming Zach’s “extrovert air,” that is, his bold and outgoing personality.
Themes
Everyone around Will notices the change in his personality, especially Miss Thorne, who is directing Peter Pan. She tries to cast Will as Peter, but Will asks to be Captain Hook instead—a “comic, flamboyant role.” Though Miss Thorne is dubious, she agrees to let Will try. In rehearsals, he privately consults with his inner Zach about how to play the role. Using this method, Will gives a performance as a terribly funny, crowd-pleasing Captain Hook. The night after he finishes performing, Will goes home and cries in bed: he has become consciously aware that he hasn’t been talking to Zach, but only to the part of his own personality that Zach’s friendship helped flourish. Still, he realizes that he’s a whole person by himself and thinks that it’s “good to be alive.”
J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan (1904), later adapted into a 1911 novel, tells the story of a boy named Peter who refuses to grow up and Peter’s nemesis, the pirate Captain Hook. If Zach had lived, he would presumably have wanted the “comic, flamboyant” role of Captain Hook in the play, so Will uses his inner Zach to give the performance that Zach would have given as an homage to his dead friend. Giving the performance that Zach would have given helps Will confront his implicit knowledge that he can’t really talk to Zach—he can only talk to an imaginary Zach he has constructed out of his own memories and buried personal traits. Yet by acknowledging that “Zach” exists inside him, he is able to accept his own wholeness and exit the state of emotional numbness and dislike of life that Zach’s death plunged him into.
Themes
