In Goodnight Mister Tom, William faces a number of challenges. William overcomes them with the help and love of his friends and new family. At the beginning of the book, Willie is brought to the house of Mr Tom, the church caretaker, as part of Operation Pied Piper. As Willie spends time away from his abusive mother he realises that his mother is the exception and not the norm. As the book progresses Will meets Zack, another evacuee whose mother and father work in theatre. He and Zack become best friends and do almost everything together. Willie learns to read and write but when his mother gets “sick” he is sent back away from his newfound family and friends. When he arrives back in London his mother almost does not recognize him as Will had grown and changed so much. When he arrives back at their tiny apartment he starts to talk about his experiences in Little Weirwold. As soon as she tells him that he knows a Jew (Zack) she knocks him out cold. Over the next few weeks, he is abused and mistreated until she gives birth to a baby. Then she ties him up gives him a bottle of formula and the baby and leaves for the countryside to commit suicide. When Mr Tom comes looking for him two days after Willie was tied up he finds Will’s house and gets a policeman to knock down the door. Inside he finds Will tied up with a dead baby in his arms because the formula had run out. When he is hospitalised he is going to be put in an orphanage Mr Tom kidnaps him and takes him back to Little Weirwold. There he slowly gets better and achieves most of Maslow’s pyramid when Zack’s father is hospitalised and he goes back to London to see his father for the last time. The next day Will wakes up and finds Zacks carers outside. He knows that Zack is dead and collapses. He slowly begins to recuperate and realises that although Zack is gone his memories are still with him. Over the course of the book, William faces many different challenges but these are the three most damaging and difficult challenges to overcome. First he has to overcome the effects of his mother’s abuse. Then he has to overcome his severe malnutrition. Lastly, he has to overcome Zack’s death and realise that while Zack is gone he remains with Will in spirit.
First, he has to overcome his behaviour caused by his abusive mother. William was constantly beaten for the smallest troubles like getting his clothes slightly dirty, for speaking when not spoken to, or even mentioning the word Jew. This means that he has serious trust issues and can not trust anybody in his life. For example, when Will arrives home his mother flies into a rage when he mentions that Zack is a Jew:”’You have been poisoned by the devil!’ and hit him across the face.”(p266). This act severely affects his trust of his mother as he knows that Zack is a good person. It also affects his physical abilities as he cannot do anything if he is out cold on the floor. My second example is the way she tries to deal with him being a young and smart boy:“I’ve put the belt in for when he’s bad.”(p31) She defines bad as anything that makes her work or is sinful in his mother’s taskmaster eyes. Finally, her abuse and mistreatment is presented to the rest of world when Mr Tom gets a police man to break down a door to find Will and the baby:“The young man looked at the bundle (Williams sister) “Dead,” he said”(p293). This shows that she does not care about her children at all and is willing to kill them in order to get them off her hands. After his mother commits suicide he is free from his mother’s grasp and can be adopted by Mr Tom.
The second problem that William needs to overcome is his malnutrition. While most London evacuees had malnutrition Will’s case was especially bad as he was still feeling the effects of his malnutrition after 4 months of living in Mr Tom’s house and eating more than enough nutrients and calories each day. When he first comes to Mr Tom’s house he is extremely sick after eating just a small amount of nutritional food. “‘Bin sick twice already. He had a good tuck then brought it back up again’ ’Malnutrition’ remarked the doctor” this shows how he has malnutrition and how far he needs to go to get healthy again. Having malnutrition is really bad because of how it affects all the components in Maslow’s pyramid. This next quote tells us that Mr Tom’s house is the best place for Willie to be: “‘Go on, breathe in some more’ And he was sick again and again until there was no more left inside him”(p This shows that Mr Tom knows how to care for Willie even when he doesn’t know what is specifically wrong with him. My last quote shows how Willie recovers and how long it takes for him to recover. This is at Will’s birthday three months after he arrives at Mr Tom’s house: “The excitement and food welled up inside him and he gave a short gasp and vomited all over the carpet”(p156). This quote shows us that even after three months of recovery Will is still sick. Eventually, Will recovers but it takes along time and many times of being sick.
The third problem that Willie has to overcome is Zach’s death that happens near the end of the book. Zach is Will’s best friend and accomplice in all matters. When he has to go back to London because his father is injured, there is an enormous bombing of London (possibly the battle of Britain) and Zach is killed. We can see quite easily that will is devastated by this: “He knew Zach was dead. In one moment he felt his legs buckling up underneath him and he collapsed into unconsciousness.” and: “In the weeks following Zach’s death Will survived each day in a zombie like daze.”(p395, p396) We can see that this has affected Will greatly and it has destroyed the love and relationships part of his Maslow’s pyramid and this is also affecting the rest of the pyramid. Will goes for a long time with no rescue and when he finally starts to recover it takes quite a while. First he realises that Zach will always be with him and his mind tries to recreate Zach as an imaginary friend and while this works for a while he soon starts to reach self-actualization and realises that Zach is not actually there but he will always be in his memories: “I’m not half a person any more. I can live without Zach even though I still miss him. He was warm and happy. It was good to be alive.”(p415) This is at the very end of the book and what the book finishes on, that most of Will’s problems are solved and he is happy.
In summary, we know that Will is able to overcome all of his problems and challenges with the help of his friends and new family. Although throughout the book he experiences highs and lows and learns many things including how to read and draw as well as perform and play with his friends. At the start of the book all parts of his Maslow’s pyramid are non-existent but by the time he is recalled to his mother he is almost at self-actualization. When he is brought back to Little Weirwold he has to recover all the way back to the top of the pyramid but before he can Zach dies and he goes all the way back down again. By the end of the book, he has recovered all the way and the book ends. This shows that Willie is a hard-working, smart, thoughtful and vulnerable person with the courage to pull through and to overcome all the challenges that face him.
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