Theme of Family in Toni Jordan’s Nine Days (Free Essay Example)

Family is the core of Toni Jordan’s novel, Nine days. Jordan demonstrates the importance of lineage through the eyes of the Westaway family through 4 generations, all spanning over the past and the future. One of the many elements that makes this novel unique is that Jordan uses symbolic items such as a shilling, an amethyst pendant, and a biscuit tin to connect the Westaway members throughout the stand of time. Jordan heavily touches on what these items represent, like familial love and connection.

 Kip’s shilling is a major symbol throughout the book, we see it in chapters 2-8. When Kip was fourteen, his mentor Mr. Husting gave him a whole shilling. During the time period and the Westaway’s circumstances, this was valued a lot more than what it seems to be, perhaps like family. In the future, after Kip has married and had children, he passes his shilling down to his daughter Stanzi. In her chapter, Stanzi reflects that she once imagined love as a ‘strike of lighting’. However, she now thinks it must be simpler like a shilling that’s been passed around between people, carried for years, and then given away. “If we drew the path of a single coin, the trajectory it had taken would link us” explains the value and interconnectedness this shilling has, particularly with the family members of the novel. It connects stories, time, and familial love. Despite connecting family, Stanzi also mentioned the shilling “links us to all kinds of strangers, we would be connected to people we’ve never even met”. This could also reference and connect Stanzi to her late aunt, Connie Westaway. Unfortunately, Kip’s children never were able to meet Connie, however, through Kip’s precious shilling they are still somehow connected, despite never having a fleeting moment between them.

The amethyst pendant surfaces throughout the novel in the same way as the shilling. When Francis was a teenager, he had become mixed in with the wrong crowd. Trying to fit in, Francis followed them into an old lady’s home, finding and stealing the expensive pendant he then gifted to Annabel. Francis mustered up a story about how he was given the amethyst pendant when gifting it to Annabel, who is overjoyed. However, this joy is short-lived when it’s revealed the real origin of the pendant, which makes Annabel give it back. Kip, seeing this unfold doesn’t allow his future wife to give back such a beautiful thing, and buys it off his own brother to regift it, sacrificing his own pay “I’ll give you a pound a fortnight, from my pay.”

After a lifetime with the amethyst pendant, Annabel gifts it to her daughter Charlotte on her eighteenth birthday. In this sense, the pendent serves as an intergeneration connection among the family members, regardless of the different circumstances they experience in their time periods. “She’s wearing Mum’s amethyst pendant” explores the idea that although Charlotte was gifted it, it will always connect and go back to her mother, therefore, keeping its traditional heritage.

Shifting away from items that hold monetary value, there is an “old and filthy” biscuit tin found by Alec. “Inside, in a brown envelope, is a photograph. An old one, black and white, but the tones are vivid and crisp. There’s a crush of people. A bunch of them are soldiers. In the middle is one particular soldier.” The soldier is Jack Husting, the lover of Connie Westaway. Connie and Jack were sweethearts whose love story was cut too short, by both of their deaths. This photograph, found in the biscuit tin represents many lovers who never got to flourish, because of the deployment of the men. This, of course, ties back to the family. Once showing a very taken aback Kip the photo, he faints and heads home to rest, however, he forgets it. Charlotte asks her teenage son, Alec if he could drop it off to him since it clearly meant a lot to his grandpa. Alec who at first is apprehensive eventually accepts to drop the photo off to Kip and afterwards learns how fragile life is. On his way to his grandparent’s house, he runs into his friends who try and convince him to get into their car for a joyride. Declining, out of the fear he could lose his grandfather, “I want to get in the car, I do. But what if he dies tonight?” Alec ultimately declines and goes on to drop the photo off. Jordan teaches the readers a lesson as it’s revealed that there were “young boys, on the Monash freeway. Two dead, three critical. I just felt so sad for their families. They’re only your age.”

Throughout four generations of one family, they remain connected through items that all mean something different for each member yet have the same effect of intertwining everyone together. These symbolic items, Kip’s shilling, Annabel’s pendant, and Connie and Jack’s photo all depict and tie the Westaway’s together throughout the many generations. Jordan enforces the idea that family heirlooms can help to connect distant relatives to the present generations.