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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Great Gilly Hopkins, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Home
Fantasy, Lies, and Growing Up
Bigotry, Insecurity, and Shared Humanity
The Foster Care System
Summary
Analysis
As she drives, Miss Ellis tells Gilly to make an effort: this will be Gilly’s third foster home in three years, though not all the moves were Gilly’s fault. At this point, the giant chewing-gum bubble Gilly blew pops all over her face, causing Miss Ellis to flinch. But still, Miss Ellis says, Gilly needs to cooperate this time, and she warns Gilly that this foster mother won’t be like Mrs. Nevins. When she asks Gilly to try to get off on the right foot with this foster mother, Gilly imagines skating around a house on her right foot—and kicking her new foster mother in the mouth with her left. She smacks her gum, satisfied. Miss Ellis tells Gilly to spit her gum out and hands her a wipe to try to get some gum off her face. Gilly leaves the gum under the door handle.
From the beginning, it’s clear that Gilly has suffered some trauma due to inconsistency in her living situations. It’s also clear that Gilly seems to cope with that trauma by being purposefully obstinate and antagonistic. It’s implied that Mrs. Nevins wasn’t a great foster parent to Gilly, though it’s of course impossible to tell at this point whether Gilly’s new foster mother is actually going to be better. The fact that even readers don’t know what Gilly is heading into next helps readers develop compassion for Gilly’s experience—it’s no doubt unsettling to be moved around from place to place, with seemingly little preparation for what’s to come.
Themes
Miss Ellis tries to tell Gilly something else, but Gilly corrects her caseworker: her name is Galadriel, not Gilly. When Miss Ellis asks Gilly to give Maime Trotter a chance, since she’s “nice,” Gilly mentally rolls her eyes. She’s had a couple of nice foster families recently, but Gilly herself is not nice—in her mind, she’s “brilliant,” “famous,” and “too hard to manage.”
This passage offers more insight into the coping mechanisms Gilly has developed to cope with inconsistency in her life. Being notoriously “hard to manage” gives her power and the attention she seems to crave, even if it’s negative attention.
Themes
In an old neighborhood, Miss Ellis stops in front of a brown house with a dirty white fence around it. She leads Gilly onto the porch, where Gilly refuses to comb her hair. Before Miss Ellis and Gilly can argue, a “huge hippopotamus of a woman” opens the door and warmly welcomes Gilly to Thompson Park. Gilly is immediately put off—“this bale of blubber” is clearly a “freak” who will never be able to pronounce her whole name. Then, Mrs. Trotter pulls a small boy out from behind her and introduces him as William Ernest Teague. Insisting Gilly “belong[s] here now,” she invites Gilly and Miss Ellis inside.
The novel’s close third-person narration means that readers get a good look into Gilly’s thoughts and interpretations. Here, it’s important to note that while Mrs. Trotter seems to genuinely be overweight, Gilly’s thoughts on her are deliberately exaggerated and cruel and don’t seem to reflect reality. Mrs. Trotter comes off as kind and welcoming, while Gilly seems to assume she’s just weird and uneducated because she’s overweight. Gilly turns to this kind of prejudiced thinking to protect herself and help herself feel superior and more in control.
Themes
Inside the house, it’s cluttered and dusty. William Ernest refuses to see Gilly to her room, clearly terrified, and Gilly is surprised at how radiant Mrs. Trotter’s smile is, given how overweight she is. When Mrs. Trotter sits on the couch, William Ernest lies across the back of it, hiding behind his foster mother. Gilly sits at the piano, and once the adults are busy talking, Gilly shoots William Ernest a frightening stare. Miss Ellis says it’s time for her to leave, and Mrs. Trotter insists that she and William Ernest will be fine with Gilly—Trotters can befriend any child. This makes Gilly want to vomit, but she decides to obnoxiously play piano instead. As everyone else leaves the room, Gilly feels assured that she’s in charge here. She’ll be just fine.
Gilly seems to believe that because Mrs. Trotter is a larger person, it follows that she should be miserable—but Mrs. Trotter clearly isn’t miserable, given her radiant smile. Again, this reflects Gilly’s prejudices, not reality. Still, Gilly apparently reasons that because Mrs. Trotter is overweight (and thus, Gilly believes, unintelligent and ineffective as a parent), and because William Ernest is such a timid pushover, that she’ll easily be able to outsmart them both and do as she likes. This gives Gilly the illusion that she’s in control—but whether she’ll see any success remains to be seen.
Themes
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