Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Literature and Connection
Family, Parenting, and Legitimacy
War, Hunger, and Humanity
Women, Marriage, and Work
Summary
Analysis
Juliet tells Sidney that now that she's looking for them, she's finding stories of Elizabeth everywhere. Earlier, she and Kit walked to the churchyard. The groundskeeper, Sam Withers, was around and mentioned that Juliet reminded him of Elizabeth. He'd known her as a girl and mentioned that Kit was sweet and he knew she was Christian's daughter. Sam said he'd liked Christian and told Juliet that she couldn't cast Kit off because her father was German. Christian had, on several occasions, helped dig graves.
The way that Sam Withers speaks about Kit suggests that while he's not a Society member, he still feels a sense of responsibility to make sure that Kit is loved and cared for. His stories about Christian continue Amelia's project of humanizing him, as he clearly didn't think the islanders were less than human and took it upon himself to make the occupation more pleasant.
Themes
Sam says that there were a number of nice German soldiers and he felt sorry for them, especially at the end—they all knew their families were dying in Germany. He says that some of them would ride in the backs of produce trucks and flick potatoes or oranges off the back for children. A German doctor even stole medicine for a boy who had pneumonia. The doctor was later caught and sent away for the same thing. Sam glared and said that anyone who accuses them of collaborating with the Germans instead of being human will have to talk to him.
Sam also recognizes that the Germans, for all their faults and cruelties, had families they loved, just like the islanders. They experienced tragedy and heartbreak along with the rest of Europe, even if they were the aggressors. The fact that he speaks about these Germans who performed acts of kindness shows that he believes these stories need to be told so that others can learn that there were kind German soldiers.
Themes
