67 pages • 2 hours read
Kate AlbusA Place to Hang the Moon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Meaning of Family
The novel portrays an expansive view of family that exceeds blood relations. Family is instead defined by the love, affection, loyalty, and understanding people show one another. One’s family is never set in stone: it can change depending on what people need in different circumstances.
Though the Pearce children were raised by their grandmother, she is not the type of family they spend the novel searching for. At her funeral in Chapter 1, the children are mystified by the amount of people at the wake who want to approach them with condolences and platitudes about their grandmother that do not accord with their perception of her. Edmund tells his siblings, “She was a miserable old cow, and you know it. Why must we all of a sudden pretend to have adored her?” (6). They are baffled by the funeral decorum of not speaking ill of the dead when the person who has died has few positive attributes. Throughout the novel they privately call her “the grandmother.” The impersonal article “the” denotes their emotional distance from her, as opposed to the more standard “our.”
When asking Mrs. Müller to be their new guardian, William reveals the reason for this distance. He tells Mrs. Müller that “she was officially in charge of us. Though the truth is, she was never really…well…there” (299). The children had Miss Collins, their nanny, but knew that her presence was temporary and that her “affection” was “not the same thing as proper family love” (71). The Pearces’ idea of a “proper family” stems not from personal experience but from books. Tying into the theme of The Importance of Stories in Difficult Times, the siblings construct an idea of a “storybook family” whose love takes the form they most desire. All three of them want a family who provides for them. Edmund, a great lover of sweets, wants a mother who will be “the greatest cook this side of the Rio Grande” (71). William wants a mother who will “think it wrong for a boy of twelve to be responsible for anything more than excelling at his studies” (71). Anna, who has only known William as a guardian, wants a mother who embodies William’s qualities, namely to be kind and a good hugger, but most of all to be “there” (72). More than anything else, the children just want an adult to be there for them in difficult times.
The siblings’ first experiences with their billets teach them what they do not want in a family. Though Mr. and Mrs. Forrester are relatively kind to them, their sons are not. Jack and Simon immediately begin bullying William and Edmund and make them feel unwelcome. Additionally, the Forresters’ values do not align at all with the Pearces’. Mr. and Mrs. Forrester lack compassion, caring little about the lives lost in the war and worrying only about their own comfort and leisure. They also see no value in reading, which is vitally important to the Pearce children. All of these signal that the Forrester home is not the place for the Pearces.
Mrs. Griffith similarly fails to embody “family” to the children. She takes them in only because she needs the resources that fostering will earn her, not out of any desire to help the evacuee children. She immediately resents them for coming from wealth and sees worth in them only in their potential contributions to the household. In turn, the children struggle to adjust to not having their material and emotional needs met. Like the Forresters, Mrs. Griffith fails to understand The Importance of Stories; she views books as practical objects that can be torn up and repurposed as needed, and she does not care that the books belong to the Pearces, as she believes everything under her roof—including them—is her property.
Mrs. Müller fulfills each of the children’s desires for family. She shares their passion for reading and uses stories to communicate with them. For Edmund, she appeals to his sense of adventure and accepts his stubborn and blunt nature. When advising him about Miss Carr, she uses The Hobbit as a reference, telling him, “It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him” (262). When Miss Carr makes a dig at Edmund’s character, Mrs. Müller tells her, “I rather think we would all do well to have a bit more Edmund in us” (224). Not only does Mrs. Müller talk to Edmund in ways that are accessible and interesting to him, but she openly defends him against other adults who misunderstand him. For Anna, she provides her the tenderness she desires. Even when Mrs. Müller combs Anna’s hair for nits, Anna thinks about how Mrs. Müller’s actions show “an indescribable tenderness” (186). For William, Mrs. Müller is the only person who realizes the responsibilities he takes on and does anything to help him. He knows Mrs. Müller is the right family for them because she is “the person he [knows is] meant to remove the mantle of responsibility from his shoulders” (298). Mrs. Müller adjusts her treatment of the children based on their individual needs, allowing her to fit all their ideas of a perfect mother and family member.
Though she is not their blood relative, Mrs. Müller has all the attributes the children want for their family, unlike “the grandmother,” who is blood related to them. Family is not simply defined by genetic relations. Rather, it is defined by the consideration, understanding, and familial love that they give one another.
Tiers of Social Prejudice
There are three main axes of social prejudice at play: wealthy and poor, village person and “vackie,” and Englishman and German-associated person. Each of these latter groups experiences significant hardship, prejudice, and ostracization that affects their quality of life. The mistreatment levelled against these groups is variously a result of fear, selfishness, or a lack of empathy.
The Pearce children are wealthier than anyone at their new village. When they receive their packing list, which instructs them to bring a coat “if possible” (18), Edmund does not understand the instruction and William must explain to him that not everyone can afford a coat. Though the children are not spoiled by their wealth, they have significant blind spots when it comes to their privileges. This colors how they think about both of their billets, the Forresters’ and Mrs. Griffith’s. The differences in these billets emphasize the class inequality in British society and how different classes are affected differently by wartime.
Mrs. Forrester brags about the extra meat they get because her husband is a butcher. When the Nazis invade France, she is mostly concerned about whether she will be able to buy expensive French perfume. Though the Pearce children grew up wealthy, they have retained their compassion, which clashes with Mrs. Forrester’s self-centered attitude.
While Mrs. Forrester is inconsiderate due to wealth and selfishness, Mrs. Griffith is inconsiderate because of a hard life of poverty. Mrs. Griffith is an outsider in the village due to her class; Mrs. Müller has never even heard of her. She is motivated to shelter the Pearces because of the ration cards, money, and extra blankets she will get for it, and she resents the Pearces’ wealthy background. Unlike the Forresters, if the Griffiths eat too much one day, they must go without food the next. Because of their class, the wartime rationing disproportionately affects them. Mrs. Griffith also expresses shame over her financial status; she is openly stressed when she believes Mr. Forrester gave her free meat out of pity. These feelings manifest in cruelty, neglect, and a lack of empathy for the children, as Mrs. Griffith takes out her frustration at class inequality on the Pearces.
While living with Mrs. Griffith, the Pearces experience the hardship of going without for the first time. Though they do not have the same biases as adults, they lack awareness until they are directly exposed to it. This later prompts Anna to offer vegetables to Mrs. Griffith; though Mrs. Griffith abused them, Anna understands that Mrs. Griffith is struggling and feels compassion for her and her family.
The village also positions the evacuees as outsiders. The Forrester twins tell their parents about what the village children are saying about the “filthy vackies,” claiming they have nits or were raised without manners. The village holds the evacuees at arm’s length, refusing to fully embrace them. When “VACKIES” is painted on the school, the evacuated teachers are worried the town will “think it was one of [them]” (113). Mrs. Warren tells the Pearces, “we are unknown and therefore the easiest to suspect” (113). This recalls a long history of communities blaming violence or disorder on “outside agitators.” This method of upholding social stigma happens because communities do not want to believe that this violence could come from their own communities (“Unmasking the ‘Outside Agitator’.” NPR’s Code Switch. 10 June 2020). This usually stems from both fear and a purposeful or accidental ignorance.
This is the same logic by which people dislike Mrs. Müller. Because her husband was German, they dislike and distrust her. When the children ask her why the village feels like this, she answers, “Guilty by association, I suppose. People are frightened” (189). While she makes a joke about being a “dangerous librarian,” the fear people feel is very real. By this point at the end of 1940, Poland, Norway, and France had been invaded; in each of these places, innocent people were sent away to concentration camps. The threat of occupation in Britain was visceral, but people misguide this fear toward Mrs. Müller rather than their real enemies. Edmund’s idea of a victory garden is inspired by his desire to help Mrs. Müller make friends; though the garden does successfully endear the evacuees and Mrs. Müller to the townspeople, Jack and Simon Forrester’s ongoing bullying shows that the reality of inter-community relations is too complex to be solved by one kind gesture.
All three types of social prejudice in the novel—rich and poor, villager and “vackie,” and English and German-associated—are caused by fear or a lack of empathy and are exasperated by the chaos and instability of wartime.
The Importance of Stories in Difficult Times
Though the Pearce children have many privileges, they experience a difficult childhood due to their lack of appropriate guardianship and parental love. In lieu of this, they turn to stories to satisfy those needs. Stories can vicariously provide for some needs in life, whether that be a brief escape from a stressful or difficult situation or a model for a parental figure that is absent. One of the most important functions of stories in difficult times is to form connections between people with common interests, because this creates real-life bonds that transcend fictional universes.
Anna often asks William to “tell [her] something” about their parents (10), usually to get her mind off something bad that has just happened. Because he is the only sibling with a memory of their parents, William “made it his business, some years ago, to paint for his brother and sister a vivid, if largely fictitious, portrait of their parents” (10). What he does not remember, he invents. The children can forget their worldly concerns within these colorful inventions. While Anna thinks they are real, Edmund later confesses he knew the stories were made up, but “[j]ust because [he did not] believe it doesn’t mean [he does not] like it” (257). He finds comfort in the stories even though they are made up. Additionally, William’s stories allow Anna and Edmund to bond with William himself, as they rely on him to provide that comfort.
William’s stories have resulted in each of the children turning to books to vicariously experience a loving family life:
[They] knew, somewhere deep in the place where we know things that we cannot say aloud, that they had never lived in the sort of home one reads about in stories—one of warmth and affection and certainty in the knowledge that someone believes you hung the moon (70).
The only love they know comes “from one another—and from books” (71). The children use what they read in books as a guide to construct the perfect mother based on their individual ideas of The Meaning of Family. Though their upbringing is difficult, the children can always escape to the world of stories and fantasize about a life with a perfect, loving family.
Due to this love of stories, they quickly find their new village’s lending library, where they meet Mrs. Müller. She comments personally on each book the children select, asking them to tell her about it if she has not yet read it. When they return, she engages them in earnest conversation about what they thought about the books and provides them individual recommendations based on what she knows about them. Stories become a common interest shared between the children and Mrs. Müller. This common interest makes the library the children’s safe space where they retreat during the most difficult situations that they face. It also makes Mrs. Müller their most trusted adult, until she finally becomes their real guardian. After Mrs. Müller agrees to adopt the children, she tells them, “It’s time to start a new story” (303). This indicates how the children’s ideal family, previously only found when they escaped into in books, has now become a reality.
Due partially to a relationship that started because of this interest, the children now get to write their own “new story” outside of the world of books. Stories can be an outlet for escapism when someone needs them to be, but they can also facilitate real-world connections and usher people toward changes in their real life.
