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 Brodie bends down to check on a drunk guy who has collapsed on the floor of the train. As he does this, the train goes through a series of rapid jolts and speeds up. He smells burnt rubber and chemicals and hears grating metal as the train continues to sway. The carriage tips one way and then the other, flipping onto its side. It continues traveling on its side, the carriage filled with terrifying noise and pitch blackness. Jackson thinks of the older woman saying, “This train terminates at Waverley.” Finally it stops, and after a moment of silence, people start crying and calling for help. Jackson has a “Pavlovian response” to such pleas, but it’s impossible to figure out what direction the voices are coming from.
Disaster hits abruptly, following on the sense of lonely ominousness in Ms. Macdonald’s house in the previous chapter. Jackson is programmed to want to help, but the crash is completely disorienting.
Themes
As Jackson looks for a way to exit the train car, he heaves and drags an injured soldier along with him, figuring he’ll come back for others. Suddenly, they fall out of the train and roll down a steep incline, Jackson hitting his head hard at the bottom. After falling briefly unconscious, he realizes that the roof of the train had been peeled back in the accident, and they’ve just fallen through. He sees houses along the track and first responders beginning to arrive. The soldier he brought with him isn’t moving and looks dead. Jackson tries to claw his way up the embankment to rescue more people, but he realizes he’s badly injured. He slips back down, and his consciousness begins to fade from blood loss. The mysterious strolling woman he’d seen walking in the Yorkshire Dales haunts his mind. He puts Marlee’s face in her place instead.
Jackson instinctively helps an injured person nearby, but as soon as they escape the crashed train carriage, Jackson finds himself in a worse predicament—he’s badly injured himself. This is as disorienting for him as the experience of the crash itself; he’s used to being in a position to shepherd and save people. Now he can’t even save himself. His mind returns to the strange, prophetic woman he’d seen before he boarded the wrong train, but he tries to think about his daughter instead.
Themes
