The Seventh Most Important Thing

“It kind of made Arthur mad that she would say this to him, but deep down, he couldn’t help wondering if she was right. His middle name, Thomas, was from his dad, but that didn’t mean they were the same people. Or did it? Until he threw the brick, Arthur had never been in trouble with the cops before.”

This passage embodies the theme of “People Aren’t Always Who They Seem.” Arthur’s mother is one of many characters to believe Arthur’s single criminal act means he’s just like his father. Judge Warner and Arthur’s vice principal at school are the other two characters who most prominently hold this view. Neither of those characters knows Arthur well, and it is understandable how both can mistake Arthur’s action for following in his dad’s footsteps. Here, Arthur’s mother (who knows Arthur very well) compares Arthur to his dad, even though Arthur’s never been violent or committed a crime before. Arthur’s thoughts show that he doesn’t think he shares his dad’s criminal side, but Arthur’s internal observations don’t matter. To strangers, and now his own mother, Arthur seems like a troublemaker.

“But the truth was, Arthur wasn’t sure. About heaven or anything else. […] He remembered overhearing one of his aunts talking at the funeral home, saying how it was too bad her brother—Arthur’s dad—hadn’t been more of a religious person in life because heaven was such a beautiful place for believers to spend eternity. She never did say where she thought everybody else went.”

Arthur considers heaven in the above passage after Barbara asks if their dad is in heaven. Arthur responds that their dad went to heaven because where else would he have gone, and these lines show Arthur’s uncertainty with his own answer. Arthur’s confusion foreshadows his discovery of Mr. Hampton’s sculpture and how Arthur will gradually find answers to whether heaven exists. The comment from Arthur’s aunt suggests heaven is a lovely place, but she gives no details about how heaven is lovely, leaving room for the concept that heaven is different for everyone, an idea explored later in the novel.

“He thought about having to tell his mother that he’d screwed up again. That he’d given up on his probation sentence before he’d even started it. That he’d quit and come home. He was sure she’d probably start crying, which would make Barbara cry. Then there would be Officer Billie to deal with (and who knows what Officer Billie would do if he was her first kid to screw up). And he’d probably have to face the judge again. And juvie’s bad food and bad showers and bad kids… The more he thought about it, the more Arthur knew he couldn’t stand to deal with that mess again.”

Arthur thinks about quitting on his first day of probation. It’s a cold winter day, and Arthur hates his assignment. He wants to quit but doesn’t because of what other people might think. He doesn’t want to let down his mother or Officer Billie. Arthur also doesn’t want to prove the judge right—that Arthur is a troublemaker and quitter like his dad. Lastly, Arthur doesn’t want to put up with the inconveniences of juvie again. All Arthur’s reasons for not quitting have to do with someone else, a sign Arthur hasn’t yet begun his character growth. He doesn’t understand that he must do things for himself. It’s fine to also do them for other people, too, but his primary motivation needs to come from within.

“Maybe Judge Warner and Officer Billie wanted to find out how he’d react. They probably figured he’d see the stupid list, give up, and go home. Just what we’d expect from a no-good kid like Arthur Owens, they’d say.

Arthur started pushing the cart down the gravel alleyway, determined to prove them wrong.”

Again, Arthur bases his actions here on what others might think. He believes Judge Warner and Officer Billie view him as a troublemaker, and Arthur refuses to prove them right. He gives no thought to what his project might mean or what not quitting means for his own opinion of himself. These lines foreshadow Arthur shifting his thoughts in “The Third Important Thing.” In that chapter, Arthur doesn’t feel badly about breaking mirrors. He doesn’t fear bad luck and figures it’s time for his luck to change after everything he’s gone through in the last few months. Here, Arthur acknowledges there are worse things than pushing a rusted cart around town, a sign better times are ahead.

“After they’d picked up the cans—and Groovy Jim added an empty Skippy jar he’d been using as a pencil holder—Arthur forced himself to focus on the Seven Most Important Things. To not think about his dad. Or the future. All he had to do was find a few more things to keep the Junk Man happy and he’d be done for that Saturday. Only 116 more hours to go.”

Arthur finds external motivation for his emotions in addition to his actions. Here, he uses the seven important things and the things that are close enough to convince himself he did a good job on his first day of collecting. Arthur thinks only in the short term, wanting to finish the day’s assignment and please Mr. Hampton. Arthur also tries to hide from his emotions behind the seven important things, not realizing that facing the seven things head-on would help his emotional state.

“He knew about volcanoes and earthquakes and how continental drift is the way the continents move […] how we’re all living on big plates that are floating around—nothing is permanent—and how some people are unlucky enough to live in places where the plates already have big cracks in them. Arthur was convinced he was one of those people. Despite the gloom and doom, he liked earth science. It was one of the few classes he looked forward to. Industrial arts was another one—maybe because the teacher reminded him a little of his dad. […] But Arthur had missed an entire set of volcano questions on the quiz.”

Arthur acknowledges a few things in this passage from his first week back at school after juvie. He doesn’t yet realize what these acknowledgements mean, but the shift in his thoughts foreshadows coming changes and growth for his character. Like the continents, Arthur recognizes that life is ever-changing and that nothing is permanent. Later, Arthur changes how he feels about Mr. Hampton, probation, and death. In the epilogue, life has changed so much that Arthur feels like the events in the past are a separate life. Here, Arthur also understands that he didn’t know all the answers to the quiz, no matter how much he thought he did. Later, Arthur learns that no one has all the answers and that some questions have no definitive answers. Some questions also have different answers for different people, something heaven comes to symbolize.

“Arthur stuck some folded grocery bags in the pockets, and he made sure to wear a pair of gloves and a hat this time. As he pulled on the black knit hat, he tried not to think about how much he was beginning to act like the Junk Man. Old tan coat. Pockets stuffed with paper bags. All he needed was a pair of foggy eyeglasses, and the transformation would be complete.”

This passage foreshadows how Arthur will change his attitude toward Mr. Hampton. Here, Arthur looks like Mr. Hampton but still holds disdainful thoughts toward the man. After Arthur gets to know Mr. Hampton better, Arthur’s attitude toward the older man shifts to one of respect and friendship. This passage also foreshadows how Arthur takes responsibility for saving the sculpture after Mr. Hampton’s death. Arthur “becomes” the junk man in the sense of taking charge for the most important thing in Mr. Hampton’s life.

“Arthur decided to ask Groovy Jim if he’d ever heard the saying before. Just in case there was some hidden point he was supposed to get.

Arthur was never good at finding the hidden points in things—especially not if it was in his English class. He’d missed most of Romeo and Juliet while he was in juvie, but he got back in time to find out that almost everyone in the play dies at the end. This was the only hidden point he’d gotten from Romeo and Juliet: Everybody dies.”

Hidden meanings are essential to the novel’s plot, as each of the seven important things has its own meaning. This passage introduces the idea that anything can have a hidden meaning if you look hard enough. It foreshadows Arthur becoming better at finding hidden meanings and symbolizes the meanings hiding in Mr. Hampton’s sculpture, as well as the seven important things. The hidden meaning of Romeo and Juliet here (“everyone dies”) suggests a hidden meaning in death. Arthur’s dad died, which led to Arthur growing and changing as a person. After Mr. Hampton’s death, Arthur grows and changes again. Arthur’s dad and Mr. Hampton presumably go to heaven after their deaths, and heaven has its own set of hidden meanings.

“As he pushed and pulled the stubborn cart back to Mr. Hampton’s garage, he decided nobody could accuse him of not following directions this Saturday. Of not having “vision.” He’d found everything on the list, including a pretty decent table.”

Arthur’s motivations begin to shift here. He congratulates himself for following Mr. Hampton’s instructions and thinks about how no one could say he messed up. While Arthur still uses others to motivate himself, he also gives himself credit for a job well done. He acknowledges his hard work and how he found everything on the list, going so far as to say how good some of his finds are.

“And then she dissolved into laughter again, and Arthur found himself unable to keep from laughing too. He didn’t even know why. There was a huge lump in his throat, and he wanted to cry or hit something—and yet here he was, laughing with his mom.”

This passage comes while Arthur and his mother are decorating their Christmas tree. The tree falls on top of Arthur, and his mother laughs. Arthur is initially annoyed but gradually gives in to laughter. This is the first clear sign of Arthur working through his emotions. Though the tree reminds him of his dad and makes Arthur sad, Arthur finds the humor in the situation. His laughter foreshadows Arthur working through his grief. This is also the first time Arthur’s mother laughs in the story. The two bond over the fallen tree that they are able to right, which symbolizes how their broken family will heal.

“As they stood there in the darkness, with little sunbursts of light from the tree shining on their clothes and faces, Arthur felt strangely hopeful for a minute. It was as if their old life had briefly flickered back on, like an old movie—as if none of the bad things had happened to them yet.

Barbara, who could be a real pain in the butt sometimes, had this sweet, angelic expression on her face. His mom was smiling and not crying. And the tree didn’t look half as bad as he’d thought it would.

It had to be the lights, he decided. That’s what made the difference.

Without realizing it, Arthur had discovered the first important thing.”

Each of the seven things on Mr. Hampton’s list represents a lesson Arthur needs to learn or something he needs to find. Lightbulbs are the first thing on the list and represent hope. Watching the lighted tree with his happy mother and sister gives Arthur hope that they can pull through their grief over Arthur’s dad and be a real family again.

“He was pretty proud of how it had turned out too. He’d glued the shaky handle back into place and polished the metal with some of his dad’s chrome polish. It looked brand-new. If the person who had thrown out the flowerpot could see how nice it looked now, Arthur was sure they would have kept it.”

Arthur found the flowerpot he gives his mother for Christmas in the trash during probation. After fixing it up, the pot looks almost new, and his mother loves the gift. Arthur polishing the pot to look new foreshadows the introduction of Mr. Hampton’s sculpture, which is trash polished to a shine. Arthur also acknowledges pride over his work here. In the wake of finding hope through lightbulbs, Arthur can now recognize the good things he does, not only the bad.

“It made Arthur realize how you couldn’t always know what things would be important to people and what wouldn’t. His mom had thrown out his dad’s motorcycle cap, thinking it didn’t matter, but it was way more important to Arthur than the silver coins she’d saved. And the flowerpot had been worthless to someone in Mr. Hampton’s neighborhood, but it had turned out to be the perfect Christmas gift for his mom.

In other words, there could be a lot of reasons why people decided to save some things and why they threw others away—reasons that might not make any sense until you dug much deeper.

Which, Arthur thought, might be a small clue to the Junk Man’s list.”

A few things happen in this passage of Arthur’s thoughts. Trash as treasure and hidden meanings collide here, but Arthur doesn’t yet understand the significance. The motorcycle cap, coin collection, and flowerpot show how items can be trash to one person but treasure to another, which Arthur relates to Mr. Hampton’s list. These items mean different things to different people. Each has a hidden meaning that makes it important to one character but unimportant to another. Arthur becomes aware of how hidden meanings work here, but he isn’t at the point of finding them.

“Even if it sounded terrible, there was no way he could be around someone who was dying. He knew it would bring back all the bad memories of his dad’s death. The judge couldn’t make him do that, could he?”

This line comes after Arthur learns Mr. Hampton is dying. Faced with the impending death of someone he cares about, Arthur reverts to feeling trapped and like his future depends on the opinions of others. Arthur fears Judge Warner will force Arthur to continue his probation assignment because Judge Warner’s made up his mind about Arthur being a troublemaker, not a kid who’s grieving his dad. These lines also speak to the difficulty of dealing with death. Whether sudden (Arthur’s dad) or gradual (Mr. Hampton), losing someone isn’t easy to deal with, and new death frightens even people who’ve dealt with death before.

“‘And then one night,’ Mr. Hampton said, ‘I’d had enough. I couldn’t stand the war any longer. I wanted to die and be done with it. And that’s the night when I had my first vision, my first dream, of building heaven out of broken things.’

He held up the fragile box for them to look at again. Now Arthur could see the bits of wood and glass and metal he’d used. Tiny nails and pins held the parts together. One piece of metal had numbers stamped on it. Another looked like a round silver button. There was a rusted hinge from something and a metal handle or knob from something else.

‘I made this box from the broken things I found on Guam. This is Death and War turned into something beautiful.’”

These lines give a glimpse into Mr. Hampton’s backstory, as well as the story behind the sculpture. Death and war made into something beautiful becomes turning trash into heaven. The box Mr. Hampton made during World War II is the sculpture in miniature. Mr. Hampton wanted to die during the war. The war broke him, in a way, and the sculpture brings him back to life. When Mr. Hampton dies, he presumably goes to heaven, where he becomes one of the many broken souls that make up heaven. Like trash and debris of war, people are broken things that build heaven.

“Arthur wished he could have broken a few more. As he carried the forty-two years’ worth of bad luck—or good luck, depending on your perspective—over to Mr. Hampton, he felt as if he’d been set free of something, as if some big shadow over his life had been taken away.

After his dad’s accident, he’d spent months worrying about what might happen next. He’d worried about his mom and Barbara all the time. Then, after he threw the brick, he started worrying about who he was—whether he was a bad kid who’d end up in trouble just like his dad. It was a big mirror of bad luck hanging over his head every day.”

Mirrors represent the third important lesson Arthur needed to learn—releasing responsibility for others and the hold others have on him. He loves his mother and sister, but all worrying about them did was let grief consume Arthur. When Arthur saw Mr. Hampton wearing the motorcycle cap, the worry and grief led Arthur to take violent action. Here, Arthur releases his worry and replaces it with caring. He can’t worry about everyone else and fix himself at the same time. He also can’t let how others view him keep him from moving forward.

“Arthur sat frozen in his dad’s chair in the banana-yellow kitchen that his dad had painted, unable to believe what his sister had just said. His mom had a boyfriend? And he was coming over to their house for supper?

This was way worse than throwing out his dad’s stuff. This was throwing out his dad and replacing him with someone else.”

These lines are Arthur’s reaction to learning his mother is seeing someone. Arthur feels threatened by the news. He still misses his dad, and he believes his mother is tossing his dad aside by getting involved with someone new. Here, people represent trash and treasure. To Arthur, his dad is, and will always be, treasure. In this moment, Arthur believes his mother thinks of Arthur’s dad as trash, and Arthur wants to think her new boyfriend is trash, too.

“Arthur wasn’t sure how he felt. Loyal and disloyal to his dad at the same time. Mostly, he wished he’d just kept his big mouth shut. It was a lot easier to dislike someone you didn’t know anything about.”

Arthur thinks this after Roger talks about his life and carpentry work. Before the conversation, Arthur disliked Roger on principle—as a replacement for his dad. After learning more about the man and seeing how well Roger and his mother get along, Arthur is torn. Earlier in the story, Arthur got upset because Judge Warner and others judged him based on one action. Here, Arthur does the same thing; though, he isn’t quite aware of it. Roger represents the missing piece that will help Arthur’s family rebuild itself.

“But he was the first person in months who had asked about his dad’s life instead of his death—Arthur had to give him credit for that. Almost nobody else cared that his dad had made great chili and listened to Johnny Cash and watched The Price Is Right. All most people wanted to know was why he’d been drinking and racing his motorcycle in the rain.

Arthur shook his head. Life was strange. Who could have guessed that the person who would be the most interested in his dad’s life would be the Junk Man who had taken his stuff?”

In Chapter 39, Arthur has a long talk about his dad with Mr. Hampton. Arthur tells Mr. Hampton about how his dad loved to fix things and shares good memories of holidays. Up until this point, characters judged Arthur for following in his dad’s criminal footsteps or feared Arthur becoming more violent. Mr. Hampton is the first person to care that Arthur’s dad wasn’t just a troublemaker. Arthur appreciates this in ways he can’t convey, and this discussion helps Arthur commemorate the good memories of his dad. Arthur also learns here that it’s okay to be like his dad because his dad was more than the bad person people make him out to be.

“‘I was listening. I heard everything you said,’ his mom insisted. ‘But you can’t save everything, Artie. Sometimes in life you have to let things go.’ She fidgeted with the tissue in her hands. ‘That’s all I was doing with your dad’s things. I was trying to let go of some things and start over. Maybe I didn’t do it the right way, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you or your dad. I loved him just as much as you did, you know?’”

Over dinner, Arthur unintentionally compares Mr. Hampton’s sculpture being thrown away to Arthur’s mother trashing the belongings of Arthur’s dad. Arthur finds his mother crying and apologizes, which leads to the idea that items can be both trash and treasure. Arthur’s mother treasured the memories of her husband but threw away the things associated with those memories. Arthur struggled with treasuring the memories and needed the physical items. Here, Arthur’s mother introduces the idea that trash isn’t only getting rid of things. Throwing something away gives that item the potential to find new meaning, much like the individual objects in Mr. Hampton’s sculpture. The space created by throwing things away also allows people to find new meaning and purpose.

“He hated all reporters—especially after they’d plastered his crime across every newspaper in D.C. They’d done the same thing after his dad’s motorcycle accident. They’d written things about his dad’s death that weren’t true—or at least, things people didn’t need to know about his drinking and past misdeeds.”

Arthur thinks this when he finds a reporter’s business card in one of the collection cans for the sculpture. Arthur dislikes reporters because a few reporters wrote unflattering things about him and his dad after Arthur threw the brick at Mr. Hampton. Arthur doesn’t realize it here, but he judges all reporters based on the actions of a few, much like people judge Arthur based on his dad’s actions. This passage comes late in the story, and Arthur hasn’t yet realized his tendency to judge people. Arthur is a work in progress, much like Mr. Hampton’s sculpture. Here, Arthur represents how flaws can only change if we know about and work on them.

“Seven—the number of completeness and perfection.

That was when the puzzle pieces finally started to fall into place for Arthur. Mr. Hampton had wanted him to find seven things to complete the project. The building blocks, he’d called them. But Arthur had also suspected they were the building blocks of his redemption too. The seven things he needed to find for himself, for his life…”

This passage marks the completion of Arthur’s character arc. He’s found the hidden meanings in the sculpture and the seven important items, and he’s acknowledged the changes he’s made in the last few months. The number seven represents the perfection Arthur, Mr. Hampton, and all the other characters strive toward but may never reach.

“It had been seven years since he’d last seen Hampton’s Throne. Seven years since he’d been a juvenile delinquent with a probation officer. Seven years since he’d gone around the neighborhood collecting the Seven Most Important Things with a grocery cart. More than seven years since his dad had died. It was so long ago it didn’t even feel like his own life when he thought about it.”

Arthur looks back on the story’s main events. He’s grown up and moved on from the troubles that plagued him at age 13. Those problems feel like they belong to a different person now. Arthur is still a work in progress. Like the continents from his earth science class, he is constantly shifting and changing.