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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nine Days, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Unconventional Family Structure
First Impressions, Perspective, and Personal Growth
Gender, Stigma, and Shame
Mothers and Sons
The Far-Reaching Effects of War
Summary
Analysis
Kip wakes, not wanting to get up for the day, which seems a bad omen. Across the room he can see Ma, Jean, in the other bed, huddled under blankets and Kip’s old clothes. He shares a bed with Francis, who snores loudly and does not have to wake up for an extra two hours, so Kip is supposed to creep quietly out of bed so as not to “disturb his geniousness.” Despite the chill of the morning, Kip climbs out of bed, quickly dresses, and tiptoes his way outside to Rowena Parade, into the lane, around the corner, and to the Hustings’, where Kip is a working boy.
Francis’s apparent privilege—sleeping an extra two hours, undisturbed—immediately sets up the disparity between he and Kip. Additionally, compared with Francis and his “geniousness,” Kip is immediately established as a blue-collar worker and therefore somewhat of an everyman figure. This will reflect their relationship dynamic throughout their childhood, though people’s low opinions of Kip do not reflect his actual intelligence.
Themes
Kip finds the Hustings’ horse, Charlie, in his stable, scratches him affectionately for a bit, and feeds him an old apple he found in the lane, though Kip takes a bite first as his “union dues.” Kip sweeps out the stable and shovels the manure before brushing Charlie’s coat down until he shines. Mr. Husting emerges from the back of the house, greets Kip, and ruffles his hair, which Kip allows even though he’s 14. Seeing how nice Charlie looks, Mr. Husting gives Kip a whole shilling, which seems like a huge sum of money to the boy, and he knows he’ll have to work out a way to hide it from Francis.
Kip’s excitement at receiving a whole shilling suggests that he and his family are poor, and he is unused to having money for himself. The shilling functions as a symbolic connection between families and individuals over generations. As a symbol, the shilling loosely represents the love between them, particularly in the way that it bonds individuals from different backgrounds and histories to each other.
Themes
Mrs. Husting leans out an upstairs window. Kip greets her and compliments her shawl, but Mrs. Husting obviously despises Kip, calling him lazy and a “layabout.” When Mrs. Husting asks her husband if he just gave Kip money even though they already pay his wage to his mother, Mr. Husting lies and swears he did not. Before returning inside, Mrs. Husting briefly mentions dinner plans for the evening on account of Jack, their son, having just returned home—Kip has been cleaning their yard all week in preparation. Mr. Husting asks Kip to keep the shilling a secret just between them, and Kip shakes on it.
Mrs. Husting’s reaction to Kip and immediate suspicion suggests that he has a poor reputation around Richmond, particularly for being a lazy child. This seems odd, since Kip is obviously up hours before anyone else to work. Mr. Husting seems to recognize Kip’s value, perhaps recognizing that his poor reputation is undeserved. However, the fact that Mr. Husting wants to keep the shilling a secret suggests that he does not dare challenge his wife.
Themes
Kip wonders if his reputation as “chief layabout and squanderer of opportunities” in Richmond, their district of Melbourne, is a result of him being born seven minutes after Francis. If they were switched, maybe he’d be in school still. Even so, Kip enjoys working, and there is much he doesn’t miss about school.
Kip’s blaming of fate—being the second-born twin—will be paralleled by Charlotte, his daughter, in her own narrative. She leaves several major decisions up to “the universe,” or to chance, suggesting that some behaviors are repeated through generations.
Themes
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With the morning past, Kip returns home for breakfast next door. When Connie asks him if he washed his hands, Francis remarks that he’s always dirty and should be made to eat in the alley, “as befits his station.” However, Connie checks his hands, pronounces them perfectly clean even though they are not, and kisses Kip on the head. When Kip makes a snide remark to Francis, Jean appears behind him and chews him out. Connie takes bacon out to cook Kip for breakfast, but Jean stops her and says the meat is only for Francis and Mrs. Keith, even though Kip has been working since 4:00 in the morning. She’ll only allow a little bread for Kip. Connie protests, but obeys.
Jean obviously favors Francis in the extreme, immediately depicting both her and Francis as shallow two-dimensional antagonists through Kip’s narrative, even though the inner pain of each of them will later be explored. As his older sister, Connie seems to offer the tenderness and affection that Kip never receives from Jean, demonstrating how in an unconventional family, members may move around to occupy different roles to help the family to function
Themes
As Kip eats bread and Francis eats bacon, Jean bemoans the fact that Kip is not as perfect as his twin brother. In Jean’s eyes, Francis will become a lawyer someday and is thus the only hope for their family, since Connie and Kip both had to drop out of school when their father died and they had to take Mrs. Keith in as a boarder. They speak of Hitler and possibility of war. Jean says that she’d rather hide her sons “in the ceiling” than see them off to war. Francis speaks authoritatively about the communist threat in Russia, but Connie dismisses him. Kip hasn’t kept up with such news since his father died, back when he used to read the newspaper, but he knows that all the working boys in Richmond are waiting for the war, too, “half afraid war’ll happen, half afraid it won’t.”
Again, Jean very obviously favors Francis and is heavily prejudiced toward Kip, though her own narrative will explain why her prejudice toward her younger son is motivated partially by her own pain, demonstrating to the reader that individuals are far more complex and dynamic than the initial impression they give off. The threat of war and shadow of Hitler’s aggression—dating the narrative to the late 1930s—even reaches Australia, causing anxiety, though Australia is far too remote to be in any immediate danger. This demonstrates just how far-reaching the effects of war can be.
Themes
Trying to lighten the mood, Kip tells Jean that the Hustings will set him up in their antique shop soon—Francis dismissively calls it a “junk shop”—but Jean is uninterested, and disparages Mrs. Husting instead. Jean starts bemoaning their family’s “bad luck” and lamenting her own suffering and all her children know she’ll go on for a long time, and strike any of them who dare to interrupt her.
Yet again, through Kip’s narration, Jean is depicted as a thoroughly wretched figure who cares more for her own suffering than her son’s wellbeing or future. This shallow—though not entirely inaccurate—understanding of Jean again demonstrates the limitations of a single perspective, especially when that perspective comes from a son approaching adulthood.
Themes
In the afternoon, Connie sends Kip to the butcher to fetch the shopping. While he waits for the butcher to prep the meat, he daydreams about himself becoming a butcher someday and admires the red of the blood against the blue and white tiles. Kip passes the bar on the way home and hears everyone talk about the war and the “plot against the working man.” As he continues on, parcels of meat under his arm, Kip hears Annabel’s voice drifting down the lane. His heart jumps and he tries to hide from her, but she spots him and introduces herself. He already knows who she is. She’s beautiful. Every boy in Richmond knows who she is.
Kip’s daydreaming of becoming a butcher suggests that his aspirations do not reach very high. From the reader’s limited perspective thus far, this paints Kip as an uneducated, perhaps unintelligent boy, though certainly imaginative. However, later narratives prove this is nowhere near true, yet again demonstrating the limitations of a single perspective and the complexity of each individual person, thus suggesting that it is unwise to judge a person by such a limited understanding of them.
Themes
Annabel tells Kip she knows Francis from dancing class at school, though Kip seems quite different from his brother. She asks why Kip is not in school anymore, since she heard he won several prizes for English composition and art, but Kip says he’d had enough of school already. Annabel thinks this a shame. Although he was nervous, Kip thinks he’s doing pretty well talking to Annabel, until she smiles at him and he’s so overcome that he forgets how to swallow and nearly faints. Annabel asks if he’s walking back to Rowena Parade, and when Kip realizes that she wants to walk home with him, he panics and says he’s going somewhere else.
Annabel’s recognition of Kip’s academic achievements provides the first major hint that although Kip is regarded as a “layabout,” he is quite intelligent and creative, and his exit from school was a result of life circumstances rather than lack of ability. This demonstrates the manner in which an individual may find themselves in less than ideal circumstances, not as a result bad character, but rather misfortune and difficult or painful life events.
Themes
Annabel leaves and Kip makes his way home, kicking himself and thinking of all the clever things he could’ve said to her. Distracted, Kip nearly walks into the “four stooges,” the town bullies: Mac, Cray, Pike, and a kid he doesn’t know. Kip feels that their reckoning has finally come; he feels like d’Artagnan. The boys mock Kip for crying when he quit school after losing his father, who got drunk and hit his head. Two of the boys grab him by the arms while they talk, and one kicks him hard in the back of the calf. Kip yawns to cover the pain, and has a brief flashback of the last time his father left for work: Kip’s nose was so deep in a book he didn’t even wave goodbye, and that evening Jean was in hysterics and his father’s body was laid out in the kitchen.
Kip’s thought of d’Artagnan, from The Three Musketeers, as well as his guilt-ridden memory of not saying goodbye to his father because he was too consumed by a book, once again suggest that Kip is very intelligent and literate in spite of his low station. The bullies’ taunts about Kip’s father not only help to partially reveal the way that he died, but also showcases the cruel treatment to which Kip is subject. However, Mac, seen here as a despicable bully, will resurface many years later as an honorable young man, demonstrating an individual’s capacity for change.
Themes
Kip jests that the two boys are cuddling him real tight, which jars them just long enough for him to slip their grip and run down the street, scooping up his meat parcels as he goes. The boys chase after Kip, but he imagines that he’s a professional sprinter who’s outrunning the “Nazi hordes.” He turns a corner, slips, and crashes hard, but is immediately up again. He makes it home, locking the gate behind him. Connie steps out of the house and finds him bloody and the parcels filthy, but she puts an arm around him and comforts him. To Kip, she feels warm and safe. Connie helps Kip clean the scrapes on his legs, chatting about nothing to distract him.
Once again, Connie’s warm reassurance and tenderness suggest that in Kip’s life, she occupies far more of a mothering role than Jean ever does. This demonstrates the manner in which an unconventional family structure—caused by the loss of their father—may cause individual members to occupy new roles: Kip as a working provider, and Connie as a mothering figure.
Themes
Before she can finish, Kip grows impatient and says he needs to go back to work at the Hustings. Connie tells him to at least take his shorts and shirt off so can wash the mud out before it stains, and he changes into another pair and ventures back out. While Kip is doing his work at the Hustings however, he reaches his hand in his pocket and realizes that he’s left his shilling in his other shorts, and he doesn’t trust Francis not to steal it. He’d wanted to use it to take Annabel to the “Glaciarium” with him, though this desire to go skating with her will cause his “so-called life to hit the skids.”
Kip’s immediate assumption that Francis will steal his shilling suggests that Kip knows him to be of poor character, despite Jean’s belief that Francis is a perfect child. This difference of opinion once again demonstrating that a single individual’s limited perspective of a person cannot possible perceive or understand every facet of their character. Kip’s desire to take Annabel on a date with his shilling foreshadows their eventual romance, though they will have to wait years before it will begin.
Themes
Kip gets home early in the evening and sneaks to the laundry trough in the yard. While he’s fishing around for his shorts and shilling, he pulls out a huge pair of women’s underwear, belonging to Mrs. Keith. They’re so large they look like a parachute. He tosses them in the air and they land down on his face. Just as they do, a light switches on in the house and Kip hears Mrs. Keith let out a loud, long scream.
Although foolish, Kip’s description of how Mrs. Keith’s underwear lands on his face suggests that he is not a pervert—as she will accuse him of being—but instead simply overly-imaginative and rather thoughtless, again demonstrating the limitations of a single perspective.
Themes
Kip and Francis listen from the hall as Mrs. Keith is in hysterics in the kitchen, as she has been for a long time. Connie and Jean are there trying to calm her down, but Mrs. Keith has convinced herself that Kip is a vile pervert who’ll be a predator when he grows up. Francis unsympathetically whispers that if Kip does grow up to be a predator, at least their family will make the papers. Kip can hear Jean refuse to defend him, which confuses him, since he’s her son. However, Connie berates Mrs. Keith and calls her a “cow” for saying such wretched things about her brother. Jean begs Mrs. Keith to stay while Connie tells her “good riddance.”
Once again, by refusing to defend Kip, Jean refuses to be the mother that Kip needs her to be, demonstrating why Connie has effectively taken the role upon herself. This is reinforced when Connie steps in to defend her brother against Mrs. Keith’s absurd charge of perversion, offering Kip the motherly protection that ought to have come from Jean. Once again, this suggests that in an unconventional family structure, individuals may adapt and change roles as needed.
Themes
Kip and Francis sneak back to their room. Through the door they can hear Mrs. Keith stomping around as she packs her belongings. After she’s gone, Kip sees Jean and Connie in the kitchen. Jean is furious at Connie for being so rude to Mrs. Keith, and thinks that without the money Francis will have to quit school too. However, Connie insists that instead, she’ll go get herself a job at the newspaper where their father worked, though Jean is doubtful.
Jean’s lack of confidence in and support of Kip seems also to extend to Connie, as evidenced by her noted doubt that Connie will be able to find herself a job outside the home. Once again, through Kip’s eyes, this suggests that Jean is a very poor mother indeed, only extending love and support to Francis, the favored child.
Themes
