Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Code Name Verity, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
War, Women, and Gender Roles
The Horrors of War
Resistance and Courage
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
Not Part of the Story. The narrator writes about last night’s debriefing, which was hilarious. Engel wanted the narrator to record her first meeting with Maddie—which made von Linden laugh. He told her that the narrator already had, and that she’s using “the craft of the novel” to write her story. The narrator, he says, is Queenie, but she hasn’t talked about her own work as a wireless operator. The narrator is shocked that von Linden likes literature. And her answer to why she’s writing about herself in the third person is that the story is from Maddie’s point of view—but also, it allows the narrator to avoid her own thoughts and feelings. These days, the narrator isn’t Queenie anymore. She’s run out of paper and will now start writing on a Jewish prescription pad.
Von Linden seems aware of the fact that for the narrator, passing along important military intelligence isn’t the only point of writing her account. There’s more to it—and von Linden seems to believe that she’s just trying to entertain. This may be the case, but the narrator also leaves the possibility open that she has other motives. Why, for instance, is she trying so hard to avoid her own thoughts and feelings? This certainly makes it harder to tell what the narrator’s goals are in writing her account.
Themes
Prescription Forms! The narrator fills in two prescription forms for Anna Engel. One prescription is for “a damned good shagging.” The other is for champagne at the Ritz Paris and a nice outfit, preferably a red Chanel cocktail dress (The narrator writes that red is Engel’s color; this is circled). If the narrator could write her own prescription, she’d give herself coffee and some aspirin, since she’s running a fever. The pins they used weren’t clean, but thankfully she’s been vaccinated for tetanus. Perhaps she has septicemia, either from the pins or the burns. But killing oneself with pins isn’t at all efficient. Pins are really only good for giving you gangrene or picking locks. The narrator tried, but prisoners’ cells here are heavily guarded hotel bedrooms—and there are dogs. (This sentence is underlined).
The first prescription that the narrator writes for Engel seems joke for the narrator. But the second is far kinder, and it’s noteworthy that as the narrator keeps going with her account, there are things that are circled and underlined. For that matter, it’s unclear whether the narrator has underlined things, or whether her Nazi readers have done the underlining. But that mystery pales in comparison to what the narrator has to say about being tortured. It’s clear from what she says here that she has been burned and, presumably, stuck with pins.
Themes
The narrator describes her regular arguments with Engel; Engel won’t let the narrator retract anything and now reads what the narrator writes immediately when she finishes a page. Unwittingly, the narrator has gotten Engel in trouble by mentioning her cigarettes. Hitler doesn’t like tobacco, and von Linden enforces whatever Hitler commands.
The fact that the narrator has “unwittingly” gotten in Engel in trouble for smoking implies that the narrator did not purposefully try to get Engel in trouble. Indeed, it seems possible that the narrator is becoming genuinely sympathetic toward Engel.
Themes
Antiaircraft Gunner. Back in Maddie’s story, the air raid siren went off. Just like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, Queenie grabbed Maddie and pulled her toward the shelter. Maddie wondered how the pilots would take off on the pitted runway. An hour later, the girls headed back for the radio building so that Maddie could start her shift. As they zigzagged across the airfield, someone yelled desperately for help. Queenie dragged Maddie to a nearby antiaircraft gun emplacement, which had mostly been blown apart. There were two dead gunners, and the one live man was covered in blood. Maddie cowered, but Queenie smacked her and told her to load the gun.
In Through the Looking Glass, the protagonist, Alice, is a child trying to navigate an adult world that makes no sense to her. This allusion gives the impression that Maddie feels like a child just trying to get by in a world that’s scary and nonsensical thanks to the violent war. Compared to Maddie, Queenie seems competent and adult—she knows that she and Maddie have to help this gunner, and that it’ll be even better if they can take over the man’s post while they’re at it.
Themes
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Maddie obeyed. The gunner said such a small girl would never be able to lift the shell, but Maddie did anyway. Queenie worked on the gunner for a while and then joined Maddie. As Queenie explained how to aim, she snapped that she grew up shooting. Together, they fired on an approaching German plane. It went down, and Queenie told Maddie that one of the other gunners did it. Maddie felt awful; the gunner Queenie was helping must’ve died, and she’d killed a man now. Queenie asked for directions to run to get help and then, kissing Maddie on the cheek, said “Kiss me, Hardy!” and ran away. The narrator observes that finding your best friend is like being in love.
The gunner (who’s male) underestimates Maddie, simply because she’s female and much smaller than he is. Sexism, this shows, is still very much alive and well, even in the middle of the war. For Maddie, knowing the gunner died and then shooting down a German plane feels like a major loss of innocence. This isn’t just working in the radio room; now, she’s watching people die—and is responsible for killing some of them. But as the women lose their innocence, they also find friendship with each other, and this helps ease the trauma of experiences like this. “Kiss me, Hardy!” were Admiral Nelson’s alleged last words at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, which he said to his friend and flagship captain Vice-Admiral Hardy before he died.
Themes
The next day, Maddie told Queenie she was going to teach Queenie to navigate. Queenie was incredulous but grudgingly agreed to head out on bikes to the Green Man pub. They had 15 hours to be back at the base, and it was only 10 miles round trip. Queenie wailed when they got to the first crossroads, but Maddie told her to pretend to be a German spy and use her compass. Queenie accepted the challenge and pedaled madly off—and then stopped at the top of a rise to climb a tree so she could see the sea. She spoke in German, which scared Maddie, but assured Maddie they’d be fine.
To Maddie, navigating to the pub is easy—and she thinks it’s ridiculous that Queenie is so bad at navigating that she can’t even find her way across the base. But Queenie is, unlike Maddie, afraid to be out without knowing exactly where she is—and she’s not afraid of speaking German, which could lead someone to incorrectly identify her as an actual German spy. This outing reads as somewhat childish—they’re playing a pretend game, after all—but the stakes are still pretty high.
Themes
Maddie and Queenie continued in silence until Queenie asked what else Maddie was scared of. Maddie said she was afraid of court-martial; she keeps doing things without thinking, like firing the anti-aircraft gun without authorization and guiding the boys in the Wellington a while ago. Queenie asked how Maddie was so good at air navigation, and Maddie shared that she was a pilot. Queenie was shocked—Maddie had more experience than most of the RAF pilots.
Above all, Maddie is afraid of getting in trouble. Getting in trouble could mean that she’ll never have an opportunity to fly a plane again, so it’s imperative that she behave somewhat. It again shows how humble Maddie is when it only comes up now that she’s a pilot. She doesn’t think that makes her better than any of her female coworkers—she just has different skills.
Themes
Queenie announced that her tire was flat. But they didn’t have to go back—there was a farmhouse ahead, and the farmer’s wife would feed them. Sure enough, the farmer’s wife welcomed Queenie and Maddie into the kitchen. It took a moment for Queenie to convince the farmer’s wife to accept her tin of cigarettes as payment; Maddie realized that Queenie saved them for times like these. Soon, the girls were eating shepherd’s pie and apple crumble. Queenie asked Maddie to list four more fears. Maddie was afraid of dogs, not wearing her uniform right, people laughing at her accent, and doing her job wrong.
Queenie proves here that she’s skilled at being able to talk to people and get exactly what she wants out of them—in this case, a warm meal and her tire fixed. Her charm is, in a sense, a weapon, and Maddie recognizes that she’s nowhere near as charming as Queenie is. On another note, transcribing Maddie’s fears like this may be a way for the narrator to show just how well she knows Maddie.
Themes
Queenie and Maddie discussed that doing their jobs wrong could include killing someone—unless, of course, you were doing that person a favor by killing them. Queenie shared an anecdote about how her great-uncle had cancer in his throat and eventually, since the tumors kept coming back, he asked his wife to kill him. She did, and she didn’t get in trouble for it.
Queenie’s anecdote makes it clear that right and wrong aren’t always clear-cut or easy to identify. Normally, killing someone is wrong—but when it came to her great-aunt and great-uncle, killing him saved him from pain and suffering. Given that Queenie’s great-aunt didn’t get in trouble, there’s some societal understanding of moral ambiguity in the world of the novel.
Themes
The farmer’s wife returned with a repair kit, so Maddie fixed the tire. A half-hour later, as she and Queenie left, Queenie said she got the farmer’s wife to draw her a map—“God help us if the invading Germans turn up with Scottish accents.” Maddie then offered Queenie the hairpin Queenie used to puncture her own tire. Queenie just laughed—they got a hot meal, and this was a game after all. The girls biked down to the Green Man, which was still open. Inside they noticed the squadron leader, Creighton, and a handsome civilian in glasses.
When the farmer’s wife is willing to give Queenie a map, it shows that people in the English countryside are perhaps underestimating how cautious they need to be about strangers—Queenie implies that the woman should not have trusted her with something like a map. But when it comes to her game with Maddie, Queenie notes that she’s still following the rules—she got them the hot meal they set out for, after all.
Themes
Squadron Leader Creighton invited the girls to join him. He introduced Queenie to the man in glasses as the German-speaking hero, and Maddie as the officer who guided the German aircraft in. Queenie added that Maddie was a pilot. The man in glasses was shocked. As Queenie shook the man’s hand, she said he must be her contact. Maddie desperately tried to explain away their game and Queenie’s behavior, and the man asked if Queenie had read Kipling’s novel Kim. They discovered that the man’s wife and Queenie attended the same college, though years apart. Queenie explained that she spoke French in addition to German, and she could also imitate several local dialects.
It seems like Queenie and Maddie have made a name for themselves, since their squadron leader is talking them up in such glowing terms to this mysterious man. Queenie initially tries to keep her game with Maddie going as she shakes the man’s hand—but for Maddie, this seems like a huge risk. There’s a chance, she fears, that these men will think ill of them for pretending to be spies. But when the subject of Kim comes up, it seems as though Queenie was right to judge that the men would be open to a game like this, as Kim is an adventure story that’s about a boy learning to be a spy.
Themes
Queenie urged Maddie to tell the men the story of how and why they ended up here today. When she noted that the farmer’s wife drew Queenie a map, the man and Creighton looked disturbed and asked for the map. Queenie said she burned it and told the woman off after she made the map; there was no need for the men to punish her too. The man glanced at Creighton and noted that “Only once in a thousand years is a horse born so well fitted for the game as this our colt.” Creighton then noted that the girls worked well together.
Creighton’s line here is a famous line from Kim—and notably, the line that follows it is, “And we need men.” This implies that this encounter is how Maddie and the narrator will end up involved in whatever brings them to France—the girls not only work well together, but they’re already practicing to be spies. It’s a game at this point in the narrator’s narrative—but by the time she’s captured, it’s not a game anymore.
Themes
The narrator curses the “bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God.” She never learned his name; he used an alias. The narrator admits she liked him, as he had lovely eyes and was a great flirt. She knew he was playing God and that she was chosen, but she didn’t care. She observes that von Linden is about the same age as the intelligence officer. Is he married to an educated woman as well? The possibility makes the narrator wants to sob—everything is “so wrong.” And she’s out of paper.
In this passage, the narrator’s tone changes: she was attracted to this intelligence officer, but she still resents him for essentially landing her in her current situation. And saying that she was “chosen” implies that, like a child, the narrator didn’t have a choice—other people made her choices for her. She also starts to humanize von Linden here, though that’s a difficult task given how evil she believes von Linden is.
Themes
