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Civilians in Wartime
Themes and Colors
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.
In Good Night, Mr. Tom, people don’t heal from grief by avoiding emotional pain. Instead, it is only when people remember their dead loved ones and let themselves suffer that they can heal. The novel illustrates its model of grief through its two main characters, widower Tom Oakley and young William Beech, who is evacuated from London to Tom’s village during the Nazi bombing of London in World War II. Forty years prior, Tom lost his young wife Rachel, an avid painter, and their newborn son to scarlatina (also known as scarlet fever). In his grief, Tom shuns everything that reminds him of Rachel to avoid emotional pain—even putting away for decades the paint box he made her. Yet when William is assigned to Tom’s rural cottage during the mass evacuation of London, Tom notices William’s artistic talent. To encourage William, Tom takes out Rachel’s paint box and makes his first trip to the town art store in 40 years—steps that, to his surprise, reduce his grief and make his memories of Rachel happy rather than painful. Similarly, when Will’s best friend Zach dies during the Nazis’ September 1940 bombings of London, William enters an emotionally dead state, puts away presents that Zach gave him, and tries to avoid anything that will remind him of Zach. It is only after Will teaches himself to ride Zach’s bicycle and allows himself to feel all the ways that Zach’s friendship changed him that Will exits his emotionally dead state and begins to heal. Thus, the novel suggests that people shouldn’t avoid grief: we must remember our dead loved ones and let ourselves suffer to celebrate and benefit from our loved ones’ memories.
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Grief and Healing ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Grief and Healing appears in each chapter of Good Night, Mr. Tom. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Grief and Healing Quotes in Good Night, Mr. Tom
Below you will find the important quotes in Good Night, Mr. Tom related to the theme of Grief and Healing.
Chapter 2: Little Weirwold
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Underneath the attic, Tom sat in his armchair with Sammy collapsed across his feet. He held a large black wooden paint box on his lap. He raised the lid, gazed for an instant at the contents and quietly blew away the dust from the tops of the brightly colored pots.
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Chapter 3: Saturday Morning
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He raised the lid and stared at the brightly colored pots. “Paints?” he inquired.
Tom grunted in the affirmative. “Bit old, but the pots’ll do. You paint?” Willie’s face fell. He longed to paint. “Nah, ‘cos I can’t read.”
“The ones that can read and write gits the paint, that it?”
“Yeh.” Willie touched one of the pots gently with his hand and then hastily took it away.
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Chapter 6: Zach
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Since Rachel’s death he hadn’t joined in any of the social activities in Little Weirwold. In his grief he had cut himself off from people, and when he had recovered he had lost the habit of socializing.
Chapter 9: Birthday Boy
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Since her death he had never wanted to touch anything that might remind him of her. Trust a strange boy to soften him up. The odd thing was that, after he had entered the paint shop, he had felt as if a heavy wave of sadness had suddenly been lifted from out of him. Memories of her didn’t seem as painful as he had imagined.
Chapter 12: The Show Must Go On
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“Everythin’ has its own time,” he whispered, and he blushed. “That’s what Mister Tom ses.”
Chapter 13: Carol Singing
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Tom grunted. “I ent ‘ere to listen to meself. One more time.”
Chapter 17: Rescue
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“Oh, Rachel,” he said half aloud to the sky. “What would you do?” and he saw her, in his mind, swing round in her long dress and flash her dark eyes at him.
“Kidnap him,” she said laughingly.
Tom gave a start. Rachel wouldn’t have said that. On second thoughts, Rachel would.
Chapter 18: Recovery
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After they had died, he had bought the pot of blue paint and placed it in the black wooden box that he had made for her one Christmas, when he was eighteen. As he closed the lid, so he shut out not only the memory of her but also the company of anyone else who reminded him of her.
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Chapter 22: Grieving
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“Better to accept than to pretend he never existed.”
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As he rode, his coat flapping behind him, the crisp wind cooling his face, he suddenly felt that Zach was no longer beside him, he was inside him and very much alive. The numbness in his body had dissolved into exhilaration.
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