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Reggie Chase, Warrior Virgin
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in When Will There Be Good News?, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma, Survival, and Reckoning with the Past
Appearances vs. Reality
Lies and Deceptions
Family
Summary
Analysis
Jackson looks a bit like Frankenstein’s monster, and he’s groggy and sore, but he’s determined to get out of the hospital and get home. Or at least to the Covent Garden flat, where Tessa will be. His real home is “the dark and sooty chamber in his heart that contained his sister and his brother.” The Australian doctor agrees that he can discharge himself, but Jackson realizes he doesn’t have any money or clothes.
Jackson is on the mend and determined to get home—although he acknowledges to himself that his “real home” is the grief he harbors deep in his heart. There’s a part of Jackson that he holds back and never fully reveals to anyone else.
Themes
Reggie has bought Jackson clothes. She got the sizes from Jackson’s old, ruined clothes, which the hospital gave her because she claimed to be Jackson’s daughter. Jackson wonders why Reggie is helping him. Reggie admits that she wants something from him: she wants to hire him. Jackson says he doesn’t do detective work anymore. People who want his help, he thinks, always get him in trouble. Reggie begs, and he finally relents.
Wondering where to turn, Reggie decides that Jackson is the one she can run to. And though Jackson makes a pretext of not helping at first, in the end he can’t resist a cry for help. Even in extreme grief, Reggie is resourceful, and even at one of the lowest points of his life, Jackson instinctively cares about and wants to protect others.
Themes
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