The book by Tony Palmer “Break of Day”, is thrilling and exciting but it also tackles so influential themes.
The author expresses his feelings about world issues and many other different topics. He deals mainly
with the themes of family secrets, death and bravery. In the book Palmer shows that every family has
secrets, that death was always very common during war times and living on a farm back when that book
was set and he also expresses his feeling about how everyone shows their true bravery and cowardice in
their own time and in their own way.
In the book Palmer suggests that everyone has family secrets no matter how big or small they may be.
Uncle Jack and even Ada’s family have secrets, for example when Ada says that “None of you
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Don’t shoot him!” “Stay out of this, Murray,” [Will] said. Even though throughout
the book Murray hated Sid, he decided to brave at the right moment and save his life whether he
deserved it or not. Murray knew what was right and stopped his older brother from killing his arch
nemesis. When Mr Barrett wanted Murray to shoot Paddy he knew he was disobeying his father.
“[Murray] knew [his] father was looking at [him] but [he] refused to look up” Murray was brave but also
cowardly in his own way. He was brave enough to go against his father’s wishes, but he didn’t want to kill
his own dog for the greater good. So Palmer states that the characters were as cowardly as they were
brave many time in ‘Break of Day’.
Palmer clearly shows that family secrets, death and bravery are common and repeated themes in ‘Break
of Day’. The author shows that all the families are sure to have secrets no matter how major or minor
they are, death was repeated and how the characters were barely effected by it and that each individual
person in the book was brave in their own way and in their own time. Palmer shows that repeatedly in
the book these themes occurred, and he wrote the book to show that this did actually occur and it does
still happen to this very