Rachel’s Paint Box Symbol Analysis

In Good Night, Mr. Tom, Rachel’s paint box represents Tom Oakley’s emotional journey from antisocial, childless widower to adoptive father. Tom’s wife Rachel and their baby son died about 40 years prior to the events of the novel. Readers learn about Rachel’s paint box when Tom is fetching sheets for William Beech, the eight-year-old evacuee from London whom officials have assigned to stay with Tom in the remote village of Little Weirwold. He keeps the box and a few other possessions of Rachel’s shut in a closet with the spare sheets, a placement that symbolizes how Tom has shut away his emotions to avoid his pain over Rachel’s death. Yet at the end of William’s first day with Tom, Tom takes out the paint box and blows dust from the top. This gesture foreshadows his desire to give artistic William the paint box. It also foreshadows how caring for William will open Tom’s heart. The next day, Tom does offer the paint box to William so that someone will finally use it. Much later in the novel, readers learn that Tom gave Rachel a new pot of paint every month she was pregnant with their child. As she and the baby died shortly after the birth, Tom’s gift of the paint box to William takes on new meaning, reflecting how Tom’s willingness to open his heart to love and finally confront his grief has allowed him to become a father to William as he wasn’t able to be a father to his baby. Thus, when Tom gives William the paint box, the gift foreshadows his legal adoption of William toward the end of the novel.