Summary
Without the pressures of farming or school, William decided to spend his free time at the local library. He befriended Mrs. Sikelo, the librarian, and spent much of his time trying to catch up on the academic material he missed from Gilbert. He created an independent study regimen for himself, and took his self-education seriously, studying the same textbooks as his classmates with library copies.
Crucially, William found the book Explaining Physics, from which he got many answers to questions that he had puzzled over for years. He needed the help of the librarian to read this book, however, because there were many terms in it that confused him. One of the terms was the idea of a turbine, in which water turns a giant wheel and creates electricity.
Almost as an extension of the turbine idea, William discovered the windmill in the same book, and from then on was obsessed with the idea. He learned about electromagnets, which are used to generate electricity through magnets, and got excited at the idea of applying them to his daily life. He began to imagine how a windmill might change the daily functions in his life, such as getting water, sleeping early, and the power outages that happen frequently in Malawi. The idea of a windmill gave him a tremendous amount of hope, and he felt confident that he could build one.
Before attempting a full-scale windmill, William decided to try and make a prototype first, using materials from around him to fashion blades. However, finding a dynamo proved trickier, as they were quite expensive and William did not have the money to purchase one. He tried to work ganyu to gain the money to afford one, but was relatively unsuccessful at doing so. He continued to gather materials from the people around him, borrowing a radio cassette player from Geoffrey and going through garbage to find rubber, but eventually, the radio played music from his small model.
After that success, William began to make plans for a larger windmill, exploring his neighborhood to try and gather the materials needed to erect this structure. After he was dismissed from his work on the family farm, he began to look through a scrapyard close to his previous school. This pile of apparent trash, which he had previously dismissed as garbage, was now a gold mine for parts that he might need, from a tractor fan to ball bearings. However, he nevertheless hoped to return to school when the new term started.
Analysis
The library is the testament to William's determination. From the textbooks he uses that are presumably also used by his classmates enrolled in school, to the other books he reads purely for fun, this chapter demonstrates how self-driven William can be. As such, this passage is riddled with vocabulary words, which William subtly defines to allow the reader to also understand them. These stealthy definitions function to guide the audience if the audience does not yet know them, and therefore reads very much like an encyclopedia or dictionary in many ways. The dialogue between Gilbert and William here is most obviously pointing to that, but eventually when William asks Mrs. Sikelo for definitions as well, the definitions return.
When William finally discovers the picture and description of the windmill, he slips quickly into daydreams. These paragraphs were foreshadowed, such as when William wondered whether the dynamo could be powered by something other than his two legs. However, this discovery is also tinged by the suffering Malawi just experienced during the famine, when a windmill might have saved many lives and hungry stomachs. As he puts it, "the idea of a water pump now seemed incredibly necessary" (168). The implication here is that, although a windmill would improve lives in general, without the clear and present danger of the famine, this invention might not have seemed as pressing to William as it did.
As William plans for his windmill, the language again shifts to that scientific, simple, yet also joyous description of the processes employed to make the windmill. There appears to be a step-by-step process William is taking, but in each step, he gets help from his friends Geoffrey and Gilbert, and their dialogue demonstrates how excited and delighted they are at the invention. For example, when Geoffrey yells "At last!" it is out of disbelief that the invention worked and the simple excitement of hearing the music (175). These two words are short, but they come from a guttural reaction to the success of their small model.
