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Chapter 21: Back to School
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Night, Mr. Tom, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Biological Family vs. Chosen Family
Civilians in Wartime
Grief and Healing
Talent and Community
Religion
Summary
Analysis
Will avoids the Littles’ house and puts papers on Zach’s desk at school to make it look like he’s still there. During his art lessons with Geoffrey, he admits that he feels emotionally empty, though he can ignore his grief when he focuses on drawing still lives. For the next four months, more and more London evacuees come to the village. In December, Tom and Will make toys for poor and orphaned children, which Will throws himself into as a distraction from his grief. Tom is patient with Will’s silence and withdrawal. He expects that later, Will will truly grieve Zach.
Like Tom grieving for Rachel or Geoffrey grieving for his dead loved ones, Will initially reacts to Zach’s death with denial and avoidance. Tom’s patience with Will’s withdrawal illustrates both Tom’s love for Will and his experiential knowledge that Will is having a common initial reaction to a loved one’s death.
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Carrie is also grieving Zach, who helped her feel less like “an odd fish.” At high school, “posh” girls mock her for her rural accent, while at home, her mother tells her she’s starting to sound “la-di-da.” She feels accepted nowhere—and whenever she tries to talk about Zach with Will, he cuts her off, increasing her “loneliness.”
“Odd fish” is an idiom used to describe someone that most people find strange. Carrie believes that the “posh” (higher-class) girls at school think she’s strange because of her accent, while her mother thinks she’s strange because she’s working to hone her academic talents and starting to sound “la-di-da” (stuck up). In contrast with Carrie’s new classmates and her mother, Zach always supported Carrie’s ambitions, so his loss feels particularly sharp to her. Yet whereas Carrie wants to grieve Zach by talking about him, Will is still in the avoidance stage of grief. Thus, Carrie has lost both her most supportive friend and the friend who can best understand that loss.
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In January, Will finally comes to terms with Zach’s death. One day, when he walks to his art lesson with Geoffrey, Geoffrey asks what work he’s brought, and an embarrassed Will can only show him a single drawing of “a chewed-up bone in one of Tom's slippers.” Geoffrey puts a photo of two laughing young men on the mantelpiece and tells Will to draw it. Will, seeing that one of the men is Geoffrey, asks who the other is. Geoffrey explains that it’s his best friend, a sculptor who was killed in the war and whose pipe he is currently smoking. Geoffrey says that smoking the pipe renders his friend “a little alive” for him and asks whether Will understands. Will, who has hidden Zach’s cartoon and his Shakespeare, doesn’t.
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When Will tries to draw the photo, his hands start shaking. He remembers Zach riding his bright bicycle with his hands in the air. After three hours, he has drawn almost nothing. Geoffrey tells him he can stop, warms up some muffins for them, and plays on his gramophone the music that was playing when Will and Zach first came to the cottage. Will, staring hard at the fire to avoid crying, suddenly feels as though Zach is beside him, excited and fidgeting while Will is still. Geoffrey’s photo suddenly reminds him of a photo of himself and Zach from Salt-on-the Mouth. When the recording ends, Will blurts that he has to leave—and Geoffrey tells him, “Better to accept than pretend he never existed.”
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Rather than go home, Will flees into the woods. When he feels Zach near him, he tells Zach he’s not there and never will be. He begins smashing branches, enraged at Zach for dying and abandoning him. Then he yells that he hates God. He screams until he collapses. Eventually, he falls asleep on the ground. When he wakes, he trudges back to the cottage, where Tom is waiting. Seeing Will’s dirty, “tearstain[ed]” appearance, Tom leads Will gently into the cottage. Will, calling Tom “Dad,” apologizes for making him anxious but explains that he needed to be alone. After Will goes to bed, Tom processes that Will called him “Dad.” Though he cries, he also feels overjoyed.
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Nancy Little opens her door to find Will, much to her surprise. She offers him “mulled wine”—and then cuts herself off, as that was Zach’s joking name for blackcurrant juice. Will accepts the juice. Nancy tells Will that they’ve missed him and that she left Zach’s room untouched for when Will wants to look at it. Then Will asks whether he can ride Zach’s bicycle. Astonished, Nancy agrees but comments that she didn’t know will could ride a bicycle. Will admits that he can’t, but he plans to learn. Nancy gets the bicycle and helps Will put it in working order. To Will, repairing the bicycle feels “like touching a part of Zach.” When they finish, Will wheels the bicycle away.
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Will tries to remain inconspicuous—he’s skipping school for the first time ever. As he wheels the bicycle through the village, Miss Thorne spots him from the school building, but she stays silent. When Will finds a smooth bit of road far from the cottages, he gets on the bicycle and tries to teach himself to ride it. Though he falls over repeatedly, he keeps at it. He remembers Tom’s saying: “everythin’ ‘as its own time.” Yet he feels impatient, perhaps due to the intensity of the bicycle’s colors or the fact that it belonged to Zach.
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When Will at last rides the bicycle, he feels as though Zach is “inside him and very much alive.” He feels intensely excited and yells “Yippee! Callooh! Callay!” and “Wizzo.” He pauses at the top of a hill and tells himself that Zach’s essence isn’t truly dead, because he still remembers Zach and can speak with him in his mind. He asks Zach what he should do, and answers in the persona of Zach that he should go visit Mrs. Hartridge. Then—still as Zach—he congratulates himself for learning to ride the bicycle.
Still as Zach, Will knocks forcefully on Mrs. Hartridge’s door. She opens it, crying but also sort of laughing, and tells him that her husband is alive as a prisoner of war in Germany. Then, taking in Will’s dirty feet and minor abrasions, she asks what he’s been doing. When Will says that he’s been teaching himself to ride Zach’s bicycle, Mrs. Hartridge pauses, astonished. Then she asks whether he stayed on. He says, “Eventually.” Mrs. Hartridge is about to comment that he’s acting a bit like Zach, with Zach’s “extrovert air,” but she stops herself.
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Everyone around Will notices the change in his personality, especially Miss Thorne, who is directing Peter Pan. She tries to cast Will as Peter, but Will asks to be Captain Hook instead—a “comic, flamboyant role.” Though Miss Thorne is dubious, she agrees to let Will try. In rehearsals, he privately consults with his inner Zach about how to play the role. Using this method, Will gives a performance as a terribly funny, crowd-pleasing Captain Hook. The night after he finishes performing, Will goes home and cries in bed: he has become consciously aware that he hasn’t been talking to Zach, but only to the part of his own personality that Zach’s friendship helped flourish. Still, he realizes that he’s a whole person by himself and thinks that it’s “good to be alive.”
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