Private Peaceful: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The present-day Tommo isn’t hungry. He thinks to himself that it is a good job that Grandma Wolf (Tommo’s great aunt) isn’t with him, because she would be angry at him for not finishing his dinner.

When Tommo and Charlie were a bit older, their mother revealed to them that Big Joe had suffered from meningitis soon after he was born. The disease nearly killed him and left him with permanent brain damage. Tommo describes how when he was growing up, all he and Charlie knew was that Big Joe “was different,” but they still loved him unconditionally. His differences didn’t matter to them; he was “just Big Joe,” regardless of the fact that he couldn’t speak very well, read or write, or think like the other children. Big Joe loved “everything and everyone,” especially animals, and was “totally trusting, always forgiving.” Their home and their lives “always revolved around Big Joe,” and the boys would form their opinion of other people based on how kindly those people treated their big brother.

Tommo recalls one evening when the three boys, Charlie, Tommo, and Big Joe, had just gone fishing and were walking home afterward. The Colonel rode by on his horse, and completely ignored Big Joe, who was trying to say hello to him. Charlie blew a raspberry at the Colonel in response, and Big Joe innocently copied Charlie, but got carried away and started blowing lots of raspberries because “he liked rude noises.” The Colonel stopped and shouted at the boys: “I’ll teach you, you young ruffians!” Tommo claims that he thinks this was “the moment the Colonel began to hate us,” and that the Colonel had wanted to get revenge on the boys ever since.

Back at school, a boy named Jimmy Parsons has just insulted Big Joe in front of Tommo, for which Tommo has tried to start a fight Jimmy. Tommo is losing the fight, but Charlie swoops in and grabs Jimmy Parsons and starts fighting him instead. Mr. Munnings finds Charlie and Jimmy fighting and orders them both “six strokes” of the cane. Everyone in the schoolyard listens as Jimmy Parsons cries out “Ow, sir!” Charlie, on the other hand, bravely endures his punishment in silence. Tommo thinks that he has “the bravest brother in the world” because of this. Everyone in the school admires Charlie, too.

Molly comes over to Tommo after the fight and carefully cleans up his wounds. She then tells Tommo that she likes Big Joe, because he’s kind. Tommo is thrilled and knows at this point that he “will love [Molly] till the day” he dies.

From this moment on, Molly practically becomes one of the Peaceful family. She comes home with Tommo and Charlie nearly every day after school, and it seems like she never wants to go home. Even the boys’ mother loves Molly “like the daughter she’d never had.”

One day there is a knock at the door, and Tommo’s mother seems to be expecting it. The Colonel arrives, and asks to talk to Mrs. Peaceful in the garden. The boys eavesdrop as he tells Mrs. Peaceful that the cottage, strictly speaking, was tied to Mr. Peaceful’s job, and that technically the Peacefuls “have no right” to live there anymore in the wake of Mr. Peaceful’s death. The Colonel offers a solution: if Mrs. Peaceful comes to work for his wife as her lady’s maid, the family can remain in the cottage. As the Colonel leaves, Mrs. Peaceful cries, and the children gather round to comfort her, singing “Oranges and Lemons” loudly so that the Colonel can hear them.

Tommo’s mother has no choice but to take the job, so the only relative the Peacefuls have is called on to help look after the children. Grandma Wolf moves into the cottage to look after the house and children. She is technically Mrs. Peaceful’s aunt, but insists on being called “Grandma” because she doesn’t like the term “Great Aunt.” The children secretly call her “Grandma Wolf,” after the wolf posing as a grandmother in Little Red Riding Hood, because they think it suits her cruel and vicious personality. She is extremely strict, but what the children really can’t stand is how “nasty” she is to Big Joe. She treats him “as if he were a baby,” always telling him not to sing at the table (which he loves to do), and smacking him if he disobeys her.

The family’s “whole world change[s]” when Grandma Wolf moves in. The boys barely see their mother because she was working so much, and Big Joe and everyone else are miserable because of Grandma Wolf’s cruel regime. Grandma Wolf even seems to be pushing Mrs. Peaceful aside, and goes so far as to criticize Mrs. Peaceful in front of the children, telling them that she has been “nothing but trouble” her whole life, for instance.