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Chapter 2: Little Weirwold
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
Willie wakes up in the night with terrible stomach pains, having wet the bed. He recalls that dead people are laid out in beds and that he’s in a graveyard. Terrified, he crawls out of bed and vomits. In the morning, Tom finds him under the bed. Tom washes Willie’s sheets and gives Willie—who’s bony but with a “protruding stomach”—a bath. Willie, terrified, can’t stop apologizing to Tom.
Willie’s belief that beds are for dead people implies that—as his mother has not allowed him to sleep in a bed—his primary association with beds comes from wakes held at home, where the dead person is sometimes laid out in his or her own bed for viewing before the funeral. His night terrors and “protruding stomach”—a sign of malnutrition—testify yet again to his mother’s abuse and neglect of him.
Themes
After breakfast, Tom gives Willie a postcard so that he can write to his mother. Willie, humiliated, watches through the window as Tom scrubs his mattress in the yard, thinking that everyone who walks by will realize his sinfulness. Tom returns, notices that Willie hasn’t written anything, and begins writing a message for him. Willie asks anxiously whether Tom will write that Willie has been bad. Tom says no and narrates his message aloud: Willie has arrived and “is good.”
Willie believes that his wetting the bed—an involuntary, natural physical process—is sinful, which suggests that his mother has trained him to think that anything he does that might inconvenience her or another adult is a sin. Tom’s immediate willingness to write that Willie is “good,” on the other hand, makes clear that he doesn’t blame Willie for wetting the bed.
Themes
When Tom offers Willie the pencil to sign his name on the postcard, Willie haltingly admits that he can’t read or write. Tom, surprised, thinks Willie must be at least eight years old. He checks Willie’s birthday on the cardboard label Willie brought and sees that the boy’s birthday is September 7, 1930. Tom announces that Willie will turn nine five days later. Willie doesn’t understand the significance of this. When Tom asks whether the teacher at Willie’s school never taught him, Willie explains that the teacher didn’t like him and that the other children called him “Sissie Willie.”
If Willie’s ninth birthday is September 7, 1939, then this scene takes place on September 2, 1939—one day after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the British government launched “Operation Pied Piper,” its evacuation program to protect civilians who were living in densely populated areas from German bombings. “Sissie” is a variant spelling of “sissy,” a derogatory term for a feminine boy. That the other children at school called Willie “Sissie” indicates that they mocked his abuse-conditioned anxiety as unmasculine weakness.
Themes
Tom sees Willie looking at the paint box on the table. He tells Willie to open it. When Willie asks if there are paints inside it, Tom asks whether Willie paints. Willie says no, because he couldn’t read or write. Tom speculates aloud that the children further along in school receive paints. Willie confirms this but mentions that he would draw on his own. Tom, dropping the topic for the moment, suggests that they walk to the post office and post Willie’s card. As they leave the property, Tom shows Willie how to close and latch the gate and praises him when he gets it right. Willie is shocked: no one has ever praised him before.
When Tom tells Willie to open the paint box, which used to belong to Rachel, it indicates that he wants Willie to use the paints inside for his own art. The paint box has previously symbolized Tom’s grief and emotional repression in the aftermath of Rachel and his infant son’s death, so when Tom brings the box out and offers it to Willie here, the box comes to represent how caring for Willie is helping Tom access positive emotions again. Meanwhile, Willie’s shock at Tom’s praise emphasizes yet again how emotionally deprived Willie’s childhood with his abusive mother has been.
Themes
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On the way to the post office, Tom and Willie stop at the house of Dr. Oswald Little and his wife Nancy. When Tom greets Dr. Little as “doctor,” Willie starts backing away. Nancy sees Willie’s fear and offers to get him an orange juice while Tom and Dr. Little chat. Willie follows her into the kitchen. Tom explains to Dr. Little about Willie’s vomiting, and Dr. Little suggests that Willie’s likely malnourished and probably “bed-wetting” as well. Tom, surprised at this insight, explains that Willie also has bruises all over him and wonders whether Dr. Little can help. Nancy, coming back in, says she has a bottle of witch hazel for the bruises, which she noticed. Tom thanks them.
It is possible that Willie fears doctors simply because he dislikes needles or something of that sort. Yet it is also possible that Willie’s mother taught him to fear and avoid doctors to keep a pediatrician from noticing signs of physical abuse on Willie’s body during an exam. This detail, together with Willie’s malnourishment, further illustrates the nature of the abuse and neglect that Willie has suffered. Witch hazel is a plant used in folk medicine to treat minor abrasions and other skin problems.
Themes
After Tom and Willie leave the Littles’ house, they head toward the post office. Tom directs Willie to go post his card while Tom heads to the shop, where Willie can meet him. Inside the post office, Willie sees a tan, curly-haired boy (later revealed to be Zach) writing a letter under a magnifying glass. Willie finds the boy oddly fascinating. Willie quietly gives his own card to the postman. When the other boy looks at Willie and smiles, Willie quickly leaves with his “ears smarting.”
Willie’s fascination with the other boy his age reveals his longing for friends. Meanwhile, his total embarrassment—of which his “smarting ears” are a symptom—when the other boy notices him reminds readers that his mother’s abuse has left him with severe social anxiety.
Themes
Willie finds Tom outside waiting for him. They enter the store. Willie looks around for the curly-haired boy from the post office (Zach) while Tom talks to Mr. Miller behind the counter. When Mr. Miller spies Willie, he angrily asks what Willie wants, saying “this London lot” shoplifts—but when Tom says Willie came with him, Mr. Miller apologizes. Tom introduces Willie to Mr. Miller and his wife, Mrs. Miller, who gives Willie an apple. Willie, shocked, thanks her. As he and Tom leave, a man named Charlie Ruddles runs up to them and asks where their gas masks are, predicting they’ll be “gassed to death.” Tom grumpily says that he’ll get some.
Tom is willing to vouch for Willie, whom he’s only known for about a day, when Mr. Miller stereotypes “this London lot” (i.e., the children evacuated from London to Little Weirwold) as shoplifters. This vouching shows both Tom’s generosity and his fast-growing attachment to Willie. Meanwhile, Charlie Ruddles’s prediction that Tom and Willie will be “gassed to death” unless they have masks recalls the Holocaust (1941–1945), the Nazi German genocide against people of Jewish descent, in which many Jewish civilians were gassed to death. Though the Holocaust had not yet begun in 1939, the indirect allusion to it here reminds readers of how many civilians as well as soldiers died during World War II.
Themes
