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
The first thing Joanna remembers happening after her family’s murder is waking up in a strange bed and thinking that everyone in the world had died. Then Martina came into the room and told her that it had snowed. She coaxes Joanna to come downstairs for breakfast. “So Joanna climbed obediently out of bed and allowed the rest of her life to begin.”
The story switches from the main three viewpoint characters to the memories of Joanna Hunter, at an unclear time and place. Joanna remembers the aftermath of the murders, when she was living with her father and his poet girlfriend. At that time in her life, she was still driven by obedience, following the directions of others.
Themes
Martina was half Swedish, and she “carried a northern gloom in her blood.” She longed for a child of her own, but Howard Mason talked her into two abortions. So she basically had nothing in her life but unsuccessful poetry. Later, Joanna realized that Martina’s one published volume, Blood Sacrifice, was written about her murdered family. Eventually, Martina had killed herself, too.
In keeping with his behavior toward his first wife and children, Howard Mason seems to be primarily concerned about what suits him and makes his life easier. And others are haunted by the fallout from his own tragedies; the title of her poetry volume suggests that perhaps Martina felt that if Howard hadn’t abandoned his family to be with her, his family wouldn’t have been murdered.
Themes
Within a month of the murders, Andrew Decker had been caught. He wasn’t even 20 years old. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. He said he “didn’t know ‘what had come over him.’” Martina had called him “the bad man” and would comfort Joanna whenever she had one of her occasional “hysterical fits.” Now Decker is 50 and free.
There is no clear explanatory narrative as to why Decker committed these horrible crimes. In contrast to her strong persona as an adult, Joanna suffered breakdowns as a child. The question is left unanswered as to whether Joanna still suffers in this way or just masks her trauma exceptionally well.
Themes
Joanna sometimes “felt like a spy, a sleeper who had been left in a foreign country and forgotten about.” The baby awakens, and Joanna shushes him, wondering what will happen if she can no longer protect him. She thinks about Decker’s freedom and feels as if “the bad men were all out, roaming the streets.” In her mind she hears, “Run, Joanna, run.”
Joanna’s traumatic experience leaves her feeling isolated, cut off from those around her, no matter the confidence she projects. Wherever she currently is, she appears to be in hiding with the baby. She is once again fearful of “the bad men” like Decker, and she hears her mother’s words in her mind. She’s internalized her mother’s command to “run,” and now it’s the guiding instinct of her life.
Themes
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