The Good Children Themes & Characters

This Study Guide consists of approximately 21 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Good Children.

The Good Children Themes & Characters

This Study Guide consists of approximately 21 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Good Children.
This section contains 2,413 words
(approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The Good Children Short Guide

The Good Children is very much a novel about the opposition some families feel to ward institutions. One theme is the distrust the children have for anyone outside the family, especially institutions like the school and the welfare system, against which their mother repeatedly warns them. Liz, the third child of four, tells the story as she sees it, trying to preserve her state of mind at each stage in the children's dreadful tale.

Their mother instills the importance of family in all of the children. Abandoned at the age of four, she was confined to institutions for unwanted children or foster homes where the pets were treated better than she.

Her only security comes when she marries Warden McNair. As she asserts at the end of chapter two, when "you have family, you have everything."

The children's mother and father disappear early on...

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This section contains 2,413 words
(approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy The Good Children Short Guide
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The Good Children from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.