The War That Saved My Life

“Up. Grab the chair. Steady myself. Step forward. Fall down. Up. Try again.” 

The author establishes foundations for the theme of persistence early in the novel. Ada keeps trying to walk, despite continuously falling and hurting herself. She demonstrates the same persistence when teaching herself how to ride Butter.

“When things got really bad I could go away inside my head. I’d always been able to do it. I could be anywhere, on my chair or in the cabinet, and I wouldn’t be able to see anything or hear anything or even feel anything. I would just be gone.” 

Ada’s early form of escape is mental. She can shut out what’s happening to her. She relies on escaping into her own mind less frequently as the novel progresses, but she still resorts to that form of mental escape during especially anxious times. Interestingly, her escape into her head opposes her fear of physical confinement. As she becomes more physically free, so she becomes mentally free. 

“You can’t leave. You never will. You’re stuck here, right here in this room, bombs or no.” 

Mam is the source of Ada’s imprisonment. Ada wants to explore the city outside her apartment window, but Mam keeps Ada from going to school, from going outside, and from interacting with anyone outside the apartment. The impacts of imprisonment become more pronounced as the novel progresses and we see that Ada has missed out on even the most basic life skills.

“We’d escaped. Mam, Hitler’s bombs, my one-room prison. Everything. Crazy or not, I was free.” 

Ada struggles through multiple battles. The novel opens with her war with Jamie, then quickly moves to her ongoing war with Mam, all while World War II is brewing just outside of England’s borders. Here, Ada groups all of these anxieties together—Her mother’s abuses, a war between nations, and her physical confinement—and expresses hope in her newfound freedom.

“There was no end to the things I didn’t know.”

Ada’s world expands quickly when she leaves the apartment. Grass and churchyards are new to her, and she’ll encounter more new objects and words as the novel progresses and her character develops. At times, Ada gets frustrated with all she doesn’t know, but her natural inclination is to learn.

“We need to be generous. We didn’t expect so many. We’ve got to do our bit.” 

The war impacts the everyday lives of people in rural Kent as they’re asked to take in evacuated children from London. The generosity, although resigned on the part of many villagers, is an early contrast to the life Ada and Jamie have known with Mam. It’s an early indication that they’ve found themselves in a place and a community that will not follow the same rules or norms they knew in London.

“That foot’s a long way from her brain.” 

Susan doesn’t consider Ada’s foot an excuse to keep her out of school. She sees no connection between Ada’s foot and Ada’s ability to learn. Her phrase appears repeatedly throughout the novel, with Ada eventually asserting to Mam that her foot is a long way from her brain before their final confrontation. 

“She glared at me. I glared back. After a few moments her gaze softened. ‘You really don’t know?’” 

Ada and Jamie don’t know their own birthdays. At first, Susan thinks they’re being indignant, like Ada is when she originally answers that her last name is Hitler. Susan realizes that they really don’t know, and this is an early moment of recognition for her as she begins to understand how Mam treated Ada and Jamie before their arrival at her house.

“It was my reward, I thought. For being brave. For walking so long, for walking away. I got to keep walking forever.” 

Ada considers her freedom to leave the house a reward for the battle she’s won against Mam. Walking itself was never the end goal. Even when she first tried walking in her London apartment, it was as a means to stay close to Jamie. Walking gets Ada closer to the larger goals she has, such as staying close to her brother and escaping her mother, and it opens opportunities for her to continue experiencing the world around her. 

“Crutches don’t change my foot! It’s still the same. It still hurts. I’m still the same!” 

Crutches are a solution to Ada’s walking challenges, but they don’t change who she is as a person. People back in London have only ever known her as a mysterious, locked away girl who is either simple or mentally unstable. Even if she returns to London with crutches, she’ll still be the disfigured daughter Mam hides away from society, trapped by the identity Mam has established for her in that community.

“I’d say it’s the right to make decisions about yourself [...] About your life.” 

This above quote is Susan’s definition of freedom. Ada’s mother has confined her her entire life, and Ada doesn’t know what the word “freedom” means. The definition Susan provides encompasses not just physical freedom, but freedom to be yourself as well.

“You mustn’t listen to people who don’t know you. Listen to what you know, yourself.” 

The people around Ada shape her identity, especially Mam. She challenges the negative narrative attached to her by learning to walk and leaving London, but she still struggles to accept herself as capable and worthy of acceptance from others as she learns who she is.

“I was still the girl I’d seen in the train station mirror, still the feeble-minded girl stuck behind a window. The simple one. I was okay with wearing Maggie’s castoffs, but I knew my limits.” 

Ada transforms in many ways throughout the novel, but she struggles to shed the negative image she holds of herself. Ada sees herself as being at a level of social acceptance suitable for wearing donated clothing but accepting newly sewn clothes is getting above herself. Getting above herself is what draws wrath from Mam, so it’s understandable why Ada would hesitate to invite such scorn.

“If someone gave you enough to eat, but didn’t keep you clean or healthy or ever show you any kind of love, how would you feel?” 

Susan provides Butter with food, but she doesn’t take steps beyond that to care for Butter. She’s not abusive like Mam, but she is neglectful in her ignorance. Ada knows first-hand how it feels to only have enough to survive, which leads her to resent Susan for not taking better care of Butter. This passage shows the parallel between Butter and Ada; Both left in pain with a fixable ailment and both given the barest means of survival. 

“Your foot is not your fault. You don’t need to be redeemed.” 

Susan believes that people should not be punished for aspects of themselves they cannot control, such as Ada’s clubfoot, Jamie’s left-handedness, and her own perspectives that have distanced her from her father’s church. Ada struggles to accept the idea that she’s not to blame for her clubfoot until the end of the novel, despite Susan and others insisting that she has no reason to be ashamed.

“All this talk about being together and being happy and celebrating—it felt threatening. Like I shouldn’t be part of it. Like I wasn’t allowed.” 

Ada doesn’t feel worthy of the happiness she begins to feel. Mam has purposefully kept Ada from experiencing happiness and community interaction, telling her she doesn’t deserve what other people have. By the end of the novel, though, just before Mam returns, Ada embraces the feeling of joy as she rides home to Susan’s house.

“You did a good job taking care of Jamie, but it was a big job and you shouldn’t have had to do it. So now you can relax. I can take care of you. You don’t have to fight so hard.” 

Responsibility for others appears frequently in the novel, with Susan modeling a caretaking role that Ada has never before seen first-hand from an adult. Until leaving London, Ada took care of herself and protected Jamie from Mam as best as she could. In Kent, Susan assumes the role of caretaker and protector, which initially causes Ada frustration and anger.

“I don’t want to just survive.” 

Ada recognizes there’s more to experience in life than simply not being hungry. She was malnourished, neglected, and abused in London but that’s the only way of life she knew. She understands now that there’s much more to living than just surviving, and she’s beginning to believe she’s worthy of experiencing a better life than what she knew in London.

“There’s nothing much wrong with me [...] My foot’s a long way from my brain.” 

Ada builds up to this height in her confidence. Ada tries out Susan’s phrase herself on the first policeman who doesn’t believe her story about the spy, and it leads to her recognition as a hero. Ada will be a hero for herself and Jamie again, and she uses this phrase again as she goes into her final battle with mam. This passage embodies a significant moment in Ada’s development as a heroic character. 

“You’re a cripple. That’s all you are. A cripple, and nothing but a cripple. You’ve never been anything else.” 

Mam establishes Ada’s identity and remains determined to control it. She doesn’t want Ada to be above her, so she continues putting her down to prevent her from establishing an identity for herself. Ada understands now that she can have an operation and no longer be crippled, though, and remains strong in her return to confinement.

“At last I understood what I was fighting, and why. And Mam had no idea how strong a fighter I’d become.” 

Ada has accepted that she’s not to blame for her clubfoot, and she understands Mam’s role in her foot’s current condition. Until now, Ada has struggled to come to terms with her mother being abusive and hateful rather than loving. She blames herself for Mam’s abuses at the beginning of the novel, but now she accepts that she’s not to blame for this treatment and has found confidence and strength.

“You never wanted us. You don’t want us now.” 

It’s important for Ada to hear the truth from Mam about whether Mam ever wanted her and Jamie. Susan is not their mother, but she wants them to be with her. Mam is the opposite: She is their mother, but she never wanted them and still doesn’t. Hearing the truth from Mam gives Ada the closure she needs to accept that her mother does not love her, opening the way for her to return to Susan without any doubt as to where she belongs.

“The ache in my heart was worse than my foot had ever been

Despite Mam’s awful treatment of her children, Ada and Jamie both sob at their final falling out with her. They both struggle with their instinctive love for their mother throughout the novel because they want to assume that she loves them too, but that assumption conflicts with the way she treats them. Ada’s realization of her own strength doesn’t erase the pain of a parent not loving her children.