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Chapter 9: Locks and Keys
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Simple Gift, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Riches and Poverty
Redemption
Love and Family
Rules and Freedom
Summary
Analysis
Old Bill. The first night Billy and Caitlin spend in the house, Old Bill lies in his train car remembering how he originally encouraged Billy to get out of Bendarat to see the country. He thought it was crazy for such a young kid to be living in the Freight Yard “like a bum.” But Billy stuck around and took care of Old Bill, bringing him breakfast, making him go to the cannery for work, and helping him to stop drinking. He realizes now that he should have been listening to the advice he gave Billy all those months ago.
No sooner has Old Bill turned the house over to Caitlin and Billy than he seems to experience relief from the ghosts he’s been keeping there. He now realizes that when he tried to get Billy to leave Bendarat, he was really speaking to himself. By helping Billy, Old Bill helped himself, too. And with some of his trauma processed and his ghosts quieter, he can stop and think about how far he’s come—and start to decide how he wants to shape his life going forward.
Themes
A project. Old Bill remembers a project Jessie did on the Great Barrier Reef when she was nine. He helped her research and watched her cut out pictures of marine animals for her poster. She told him that she wanted to learn to dive so she could visit the reef and he promised that one day, they would go together. Now, he thinks of the opportunities in Queensland, the state closest to the reef. It’s warmer there in the winter, and there will be plenty of work picking fruit in the orchards and farms. And while he’s gone, finishing Jessie’s project, he knows Billy will be looking after everything he owns in Bendarat.
Old Bill rehearses another memory of Jessie, one that gives him a new sense of direction for at least the near-term future. The abundant life in the Great Barrier Reef fascinated animal-loving Jessie. And the abundance of Queensland offers Old Bill not just tourist opportunities, but also the chance to reexperience the value of work, which will provide a different sort of meaning for him on a daily basis.
Themes
Measure. Caitlin and Billy walk through the gracious house with its big kitchen and generous rooms, brushing away the cobwebs. They both love the white curtains with blue seashells. These, along with a pile of country-western records, are the only personal touches in the house. The furniture is all still there, but they can’t find any photographs or other mementos. In the doorway to the smaller bedroom, they find pencil marks on the wall where Old Bill, his wife, and Jessie measured their heights in January of 1991 1992, and 1993. Jessie had scrawled a note on the wall about how she grew 13 centimeters in two years, while Old Bill hadn’t grown at all. Billy and Caitlin stand in respectful silence, measuring the brevity of Jessie’s life.
Old Bill’s house shares features with Caitlin’s home and with Billy’s train car—it’s the best of both worlds. It’s large and comfortable (like Caitlin’s house), but it’s also welcoming, even though all personal touches that might remind anyone of Old Bill’s old life or his family have been removed. In cleaning it, they both claim the house as their own space—at least for a time—and show their respect for the house and the people who used to live within its walls. Finding Jessie’s growth record is a sobering reminder that the unexpected can happen, and it throws Billy’s unexpected luck into even sharper relief.
Themes
Cleaning. Caitlin tells her parents part of the truth about where she’s going on Saturday morning when she packs rags, a bucket, and a mop. She says she’s helping a friend with cleaning and that she’ll be gone all day. Then she leaves before they can ask any further questions. At the house on Wellington, Billy has already cleaned the bathroom and started scrubbing the kitchen floor. She vacuums the living room and master bedroom. They eat lunch in the yard, then they cuddle on the picnic blanket. Caitlin watches Billy looking at the house.
Caitlin and Billy make the house habitable together. Cleaning out the dust and cobwebs is an important step toward the house’s redemption, which will be fulfilled as they share the space over the coming weeks and months, filling it with new, happy memories to live alongside the tragedies. Their picnic lunch outside gives them a vantage point to look at the house as they prepare to make it their own, at least for a time. And it recalls their first date, where sharing a simple meal brought them closer together.
Themes
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Saturday dinner. Caitlin calls her mother on her mobile phone to say she’s having dinner with her friend and will be home late. Then she hangs up and turns the phone off. This evening, she and Billy will make dinner and eat together before having sex. Then, they will get dressed again and Billy will walk her home, where she will introduce him to her parents. She’s ready. She loves and trusts him, and she feels it’s time for her to take her life into her own hands. She puts the phone on the counter and starts to help Billy cook.
The house doesn’t just change Billy’s life. It also pushes Caitlin closer to confronting her parents with important truths about her life—specifically her relationship with Billy and her own desires for her future. The house and her relationships with Billy and Old Bill have given her the security, support, and strength to take a more active role in charting her own path.
Themes
The best meal. Caitlin and Billy spend all afternoon making dinner—a chicken curry with rice. They keep stopping to put on records and dance around the living room, laughing and clinging to each other. They dance terribly, unsure of who should lead and who should follow. When the food is ready, they pour some beers and sit down at a proper table with a tablecloth, napkins, and proper plates and cutlery. They toast Old Bill. They each have two helpings of dinner, which is the best meal Billy has ever eaten.
Earlier in the novel, Billy and Caitlin shared a meal in Caitlin’s house. This meal brought them closer together and instigated a new, more intense phase of their relationship. Now they stand on the cusp of another new phase, with Billy safely established in Old Bill’s house and working to figure out his next steps. Their special meal marks the occasion and strengthens their bond. It also allows them to position themselves as adults—eating at a set table this time instead of on the floor.
Themes
Value. After they’ve had sex, Caitlin and Billy lie together in the bed looking through the window and the moon behind the tree branches. He reaches under the bed and brings out the emerald ring he bought months earlier when he had all that money from working at the cannery and he couldn’t spend it all on beer, or food or himself. He shows Caitlin.
Throughout the book, Billy has both implied and claimed outright that a person can’t buy the truly valuable things in life—friendship, safety, freedom—with money. And Caitlin has ruminated on the ways in which people use material things as a poor substitute for intimacy. This poem—with Billy’s gift of the ring at its heart—reiterates these ideas.
Themes
