Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tomorrow, When the War Began, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War, Law, and Morality
Family, Friendship, and Love
Coming of Age, Transformation, and the Loss of Innocence
Writing and Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
Ellie and Fiona plant a small vegetable garden, and Lee, still not very mobile, makes a rationed list of their food. Everyone one has been short tempered with each other, except for Homer and Fiona, and it has been a long day. Fiona asks Ellie what she should do about Homer. Ellie asks if she likes him, and Fiona admits that she does. Fiona asks Ellie what she would do if she was in her position, and Ellie thinks that she kind of is. However, Ellie realizes that her attraction to Homer is purely physical. With Lee, Ellie is interested in his minds and thoughts.
Each of their assigned tasks reflects the group’s growing maturity and their reasonable and sound decisions. They are planning ahead and approaching their food supply in a deliberate and responsible way, which also suggests they are growing up and becoming adults—especially in light of their last trip to Hell, when they quickly ate all their food and had to starve the final day of their trip.
Themes
That night, with Fiona sleeping next to her, Ellie thinks about her parents. She doesn’t know if she makes herself feel worse by thinking about them, but it's her way of keeping them alive. They all get up with the sun—a new habit that has come with their move to Hell—and decide the day’s work. They will work most of the morning and then go out in search of more supplies when it gets dark. During lunch, Lee asks Ellie if she will take him to the Hermit’s hut. Ellie agrees, and by 2:00, they are on their way.
Unlike the last trip to Hell, in which all of the friends lounged about lazily and let the days pass without incident, the group is now driven and purposeful.
Themes
Ellie and Lee make it to the Hermit’s hut and only stop to rest once. They talk as they walk, and Ellie admits that she does like Lee, but she has concerns. What if they start to spend time together and it doesn’t work out? They will both still have to live in Hell regardless, and she doesn’t want there to be tension between them. Lee says he loves Ellie for her mind, and Ellie stops at the word “love.” They step into the hut, and Lee immediately begins looking around, finding a metal box in a rotting windowsill.
Here, Ellie and Lee grapple with their feelings for one another, which are complicated by the backdrop of war and their very real fight for survival. That they’re even flirting with the possibility of a relationship at a time like this suggests that it’s impossible to fully ignore one’s feelings, even in the midst of extreme circumstances.
Themes
Inside the box are papers and pictures, and a war medal awarded to Bertram Christie, which Ellie and Lee decide must be the Hermit’s name. There are newspaper clippings about the murder of Bertram’s family, but the details are quite vague. There are also formal documents, one written by the local coroner, which claims Bertram’s wife and child were killed on December 24 by Bertram himself. There had been a fire, and the bodies were badly burned. According to the coroner, the Hermit either killed them with a single shot to the head after they were burned because they couldn’t get to medical care so far in the bush and he wanted to end their suffering; or, the report says, the Hermit killed them and then lit the fire to cover his crimes. Either way, Bertram Hubert definitely killed his wife and son.
The formal documents that Ellie and Lee find in the windowsill of the Hermit’s hut underscore the limitations of storytelling, especially local legends and gossip. The story that Ellie and the others know about the Hermit doesn’t include the details of what actually happened, and even the newspaper’s account is vague and incomplete. The documents in the box imply that the Hermit didn’t kill his family in cold blood at all, and that he killed them as an act of mercy to spare them pain at the end of life—an act which reflects a deep love for his family and willingness to sacrifice on their behalf.
Themes
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