Tom's Midnight Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child abuse, and gender discrimination.

“If, standing alone on the back doorstep, Tom allowed himself to weep tears, they were tears of anger. He looked his goodbye at the garden, and raged that he had to leave it—leave it and Peter. They had planned to spend their time here so joyously these holidays.”

The novel’s opening lines convey Tom Long’s feelings at the beginning of the story. His tears demonstrate his distress at leaving his family home. However, the author underlines that Tom’s primary emotion is anger at his inability to defy his parents’ decision, emphasizing the powerlessness of childhood and introducing the theme of The Contrast Between Childhood and Adulthood. Tom’s sad farewell to the garden highlights how the protagonist equates natural outside space with freedom and joy.

“This is a nursery! I’m not a baby!”

Tom’s indignant declaration on seeing his new room reveals aspects of his character at this stage in the narrative. His outburst demonstrates ingratitude and a self-centered streak as he fails to acknowledge his aunt Gwen’s attempts to make the room welcoming. Tom’s focus on the bars on the window also expresses his perception of the Kitsons’ apartment as a prison. Despite Tom’s claim that he is “not a baby,” his response ironically indicates his emotional immaturity.

“Nothing…Only this: a great lawn where flower-beds bloomed; a towering fir-tree, and thick, beetle-browed yews that humped their shapes down two sides of the lawn; on the third side, to the right, a greenhouse almost the size of a real house; from each corner of the lawn, a path that twisted away to some other depths of garden, with other trees.”

The Kitsons’ claim that there is nothing worth seeing at the back of the house contrasts with the scene Tom encounters. This first description of the garden vividly conveys its abundance and expansiveness through adjectives such as “great,” “towering,” and “thick.