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Chapter 2: Bendarat
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
Caitlin and mopping. Caitlin watches Billy take the food left behind by other McDonald’s patrons. Her first impulse is to tell him to put the food back, but she stops herself. She reasons that the food was just going to be thrown away otherwise. She’s mopping the floor—a job she hates—and she continues watching Billy as he helps himself to part of an abandoned apple pie. Billy notices Caitlin watching, and he stares at her, almost as if daring her to tell the manager. Instead, she smiles and confesses to him that she hates mopping. When Billy finishes eating, he walks up, reads her name off her badge, and wishes her goodnight.
This poem switches speakers from Billy to Catlin, giving readers a different perspective on Billy’s time at the McDonald’s and introducing them to the second of the book’s three main characters. Caitlin’s initial inclination to turn Billy in for taking abandoned fries suggests that she is one of the “rule-followers” that Billy mistrusts. But in interrogating this impulse and choosing not to report him, she joins Billy in the camp of the rule-breakers. This suggests a similarity between the two, intimating that Billy may not be so alone.
Themes
Too rich. Caitlin doesn’t need to work at McDonalds. Her family is wealthy. But her mom matches her paychecks and puts all the money in a savings account for college. Caitlin can’t wait to go to college, but she has two years left at Bendarat Grammar School—the $10,000-a-year private high school. Unlike her friends at the public school, she must wear a school uniform.
Because her family has wealth, Caitlin experiences a financial and material security that contrasts directly with Billy’s severe poverty. Yet, Caitlin’s musings here suggest that she and Billy have other similarities; both find their family lives to be unfulfilling (even if Caitlin experiences her parents as distant rather than abusive). And, like runaway Billy, Caitlin can’t wait to leave home and create a life on her own terms in college.
Themes
Billy. Billy immediately notices Caitlin’s bouncy, shiny, clean hair, her clear skin, and her expensive watch. He realizes that she’s rich, but he also sees intelligence in her eyes. At first, he wanted to hate her because he expected her to call the store Manager on him. But when she smiled and complained about mopping, he felt a sense of kinship with her, born of the fact that they were both doing things they didn’t like but had to do.
This poem returns to Billy’s perspective, and readers get to see his initial reaction to Caitlin. He immediately notices signs that hint at her easy and comfortable life. But rather than allowing these to bias him against her, he also considers her behavior, which suggests that she shares some important feelings with him—a desire for freedom, a distrust of authority, and a sense of doing what’s necessary to survive.
Themes
Breakfast. Billy likes Bendarat. He has a welcoming library in which to read, a McDonald’s where he can collect enough food for his supper, and a cozy abandoned train car to sleep in. Each morning, he walks to the apple and pear orchards outside town, climbs their fences, and picks fresh fruit for his breakfast. He walks past the Bendarat Grammar School—where he thinks Caitlin must go—on his way, but he’s careful to pass before school hours. He doesn’t want her to see him walking past in his same old, well-worn clothes.
Billy’s picking fruit from the orchards for breakfast parallels his earlier experience with Westfield Creek back in his childhood town: in both cases, the natural world allows him to experience a richness in life. This scene also offers a pointed reminder that he sees himself in his own category outside the rules; although technically he commits theft, he doesn’t meaningfully harm anyone (similar to taking leftovers at McDonald’s). Finally, Billy’s not wanting Caitlin to see him marks the first time he feels self-conscious about his poverty and precarious station in life.
Themes
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Hunger. Caitlin doesn’t really like her job at McDonald’s, but she admits that it has gotten more interesting since Billy showed up. After he said goodbye the first night, she went to wipe off his table and she found a note. It asked her if she knew the origin and meaning of her name, “Caitlin.” It’s an Irish form of Catherine and it means “pure and innocent.” Reading the note made her feel pangs of hunger, but not for food.
Billy shows Caitlin—and readers—more evidence of his intelligent and affectionate nature by leaving her the note about her name. The note also suggests his interest in her—especially if she lives up to her name. Billy pays attention and sees Caitlin’s character in a way that her parents do not; they may provide the material things she needs to survive (like food), but they don’t give her the love and acceptance she really craves. It seems that Billy, despite his material poverty, has enormous emotional riches to offer her.
Themes
Manners. Billy comes back to the McDonald’s on another night. There are more patrons, and the Manager comes to the upstairs dining room, so Caitlin can’t chat with him. But when the Manager finally leaves, she mops over to his table to introduce herself as Caitlin Holmes. Billy shakes her hand politely and tells her his name, Billy Luckett.
Billy’s behavior continues to surprise Caitlin, subtly suggesting that she harbors stereotypes about people who, like Billy, are poor and unhoused. Nevertheless, something in his character—perhaps the way he acknowledges her humanity and her existence—inescapably draws her to him.
Themes
Business. The third time Billy eats at the McDonald’s, he hands Caitlin a business card when he says goodnight. She thinks he’s much more polite than any other boy she knows. At first, the business card confuses her since it’s for an electrical contractor named Peter Robinson. But when she turns it over, she finds Billy’s card, which gives his name, his job (“Unemployed Friend”) and his address in the abandoned car at the Freight Yard. She smiles at the realization that he’s proud of his life, even though he clearly doesn’t have a home.
The business card continues to humanize Billy to Caitlin by showing her that he has a sense of humor—both in general, and about his current situation as an unhoused runaway teenager. He also uses it to formalize his developing relationship with Caitlin under the heading of friendship; this represents an important step in his (and her) journey to finding acceptance and intimacy by creating a chosen family with each other. Earlier, Billy tried to assure readers—and maybe himself—that he isn’t proud. But just as he can see into Caitlin’s character, she can see into his. And she recognizes that he is in fact proud of his ability to survive and create a life and a set of meaningful relationships for himself on his own terms.
Themes
Caitlin. Caitlin considers herself a normal 17-year-old girl. She thinks about boys—at least generic boys, not any that she knows—and she sometimes talks with them at school. She’s aware when her friends, Kate and Petra, flirt with boys. She’s been on a few dates, but mostly in groups. She’s done “a few things” with boys at parties, “mild stuff.” There’s nothing wrong with her so-called love life, but also nothing real about it.
As Caitlin considers her relationships with her friends and (thus far) with boys, she shows readers how deeply she longs for intimate, loving relationships with others that she hasn’t yet achieved. She isn’t yet living life or creating relationships on her own terms, so they don’t feel real to her yet.
Themes
