Identity and Independence Theme Analysis

For most of Tom's life, he lived in the shadow of his older brother Daniel. Despite being only a year and a half apart in age, Daniel overshadowed his little brother in everything—in flashbacks, Tom describes Daniel as bigger, handsomer, and more attractive to girls. However, in the aftermath of the accident, Tom is forced to look closely at his relationship with his brother and the way in which Daniel's supposed superiority caused Tom to suppress his own desires and cater to Daniel's every whim. While all the characters in the novel must redefine their identities in the aftermath of the accident, Tom in particular finds that he can only truly come into his own when he discovers who he is as an individual, rather than someone who only exists in relation to his brother.

Though Daniel did overshadow Tom before the accident, the brothers were nonetheless extremely close. They spent hours every day working on their ball handling skills and while there are moments that point to the fact that Daniel has a mean streak that didn't spare his brother, Daniel also dedicated a great deal of time to both Tom and to rugby. In fact, the two spent so much time playing rugby together that the local Mumbilli paper followed Tom and Daniel's sports career through "The Legend of the Brennan Brothers," an ongoing feature that reinforced for everyone—Tom, Daniel, and the rest of the town—that the two could and should only be considered as a unit rather than as individuals. In some ways, this habit of others grouping the Brennans together as a single entity extended even beyond Tom and Daniel to Mum and Dad as well, given how entrenched both of them were in social life and sports in Mumbilli.

On a darker note, denying the individuality of the Brennan family also contributes to every member being ostracized following the trial in which the judge sentences Daniel to five years in prison. Their home becomes a target for offensive graffiti, which causes Dad to decide that the best thing to do is move his family six hours away to the much larger city of Coghill—where, he believes, the Brennans will be able to live in relative anonymity and escape the abuse. Yet the violent tenor of the abuse is why, even after the move to Coghill, Tom is anxious about others finding out about what happened in Mumbilli: because he's never been given the space to think of who he is as an individual, he's afraid that his new peers will shun him after they find out what Daniel did. In other words, Tom continues to think of his identity as being intrinsically and irreversibly linked to Daniel's, even as he recognizes that this is no longer a good thing.

This fear seeps into everything Tom does and, for much of the novel, keeps him from recognizing that for most people in Coghill, Tom does actually exist separately from his older brother. Most people simply know Tom as a star rugby player, and though some are aware that he and Daniel were once an unstoppable team (or even mistake Tom for Daniel), most in Coghill are simply thrilled to have Tom in town to play for them. This doesn't become clear to Tom, however, until after Kylie gives a poorly-thought-out speech in one of her classes, in which she shares the story of what happened in Mumbilli. Tom is understandably terrified that this will mean that his entire family is going to once again become the target of abuse because of Daniel's actions. But when nothing particularly bad happens following Kylie's speech, Tom is forced to accept that Coghill actually will offer him the opportunity to extricate himself from Daniel and go on to figure out who he is as a person in his own right.

Once Tom realizes that he doesn't need to fear punishment for being Daniel's brother anymore, he is able to let go of some of his anxiety, throw himself into his new life in Coghill, and create a new identity for himself completely separate from the identity he once shared with Daniel. It is worth keeping in mind that the success of this is, to a degree, dependent on where Tom is and who he's with—during the rugby match with St. John's, a former teammate does yell "killer" at Tom in reference to Daniel's actions, for instance, which indicates that this process of discovering his own identity isn't necessarily a clean and linear process by any means. However, the fact that Tom ends the novel feeling whole for the first time and happy with the person he's become suggests that for him, his ability to come of age was linked entirely to his ability to engage with himself as an individual and to discover a sense of independence from Daniel and the rest of his family.