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
Addressing Maddie, the narrator says she’s been so lost writing about the early days of their friendship—and she was certain Maddie landed the plan safely. The narrator hasn’t written in four days because she was out of paper, but then they showed her the pictures of Maddie’s cockpit (the narrator had already seen photos of the plane’s rear cabin). In part because of the pictures and in part because they’ve been torturing the French girl again, the narrator hasn’t slept well. This is because the narrator’s room opens onto the interview room. It’s impossible to sleep through interrogations.
The implication here is that the narrator has recently learned that Maddie died when she crash-landed the plane (recall that the narrator had already seen pictures of the back of the plane, but not the cockpit). She acknowledges that writing about her friendship with Maddie has allowed her to escape the horrors of her life. But now that she knows Maddie is dead, such an escape doesn’t work as well anymore. Rather, this account is a memorial for Maddie.
Themes
Then, a few days ago, guards chained the narrator and took her to the subbasement, which turned out to be the kitchen. The woman working there had been fired, so they needed someone else to do her job. The cook is a foul man, and the narrator let him touch her breasts in exchange for paper. The basement of the Château de Bordeaux hotel has a few rooms, but the cellars aren’t secure and so are empty. Also, there are lots of service elevators that go to the main street (these two observations are underlined).
The narrator is ostensibly just describing what she saw when she had to go down and help in the kitchens. She’s writing a novel of sorts, after all, and it’s common to describe the setting like this. But the underlining again adds mystery, as the reader doesn’t yet know why certain details are underlined. As the narrator describes her encounter with the cook, she shows that she’s willing to use her femininity to get what she wants and keep herself safe.
Themes
In one passageway, the narrator discovered stacks of blank recipe cards. She briefly tried to be like Sara Crewe in A Little Princess, who pretended she was imprisoned in the Bastille to make life bearable. But the narrator couldn’t do it. She still got to take the cards with her in exchange for letting the cook touch her breasts; she avoided assault by telling the cook she belonged to von Linden. Guards then made her watch von Linden torture a French boy for an hour, and after that, von Linden asked if the narrator had ever read Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. They argued about the book and Orwellian socialism for a while, and then the guards threw the narrator back in her cell.
Sara Crewe in A Little Princess is, importantly, a child—while the narrator is an adult. The narrator could simply be too grown-up to be able to escape into fantasy, as Sara does in the book. The narrator again shows how she uses her femininity and sexuality to protect herself—she implies that von Linden is raping her, which as far as readers know isn’t the case. Rather, von Linden seems to be enjoying the narrator’s company and the fact that they can talk about literature—though he also makes sure to show the narrator how powerful and dangerous he is by forcing her to sit in on him torturing others.
Themes
The narrator dreamed that she was at the beginning of the interrogation process all over again. She writes that they starved her in the dark for almost a month, then stripped her and tortured her without any emotion. They didn’t seem to take pleasure in this process; they treated it like it was their job, like she was a wireless set. Wireless sets, though, don’t cry and vomit and sit in their own filth for days. Now the narrator feels like a special wireless set that von Linden can use to tune in to the BBC.
This is about as graphic as the narrator ever gets when it comes to describing the torture she suffered. Keep in mind that she’s writing for von Linden, who knows what she went through, since he’s the one who tortured her. So although the narrator seems to get some catharsis from being able to talk about her terrible dreams and the torture, she might not feel like this is the place to fully dive into her trauma and try to make sense of it.
Themes
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So now, four days have passed, and the narrator doesn’t know where she left off. Engel is gone today, so Thibaut is watching her with some other man. The narrator is frantically writing anything just so they leave her alone. She’s also panicking because von Linden told her she has two weeks to write—do her four wasted days count? She’s never going to reach a conclusion now; she’ll have to beg for more time. And she’ll have to be polite; she suspects they treat her like a “dangerous lunatic” because she curses and is always in a bad mood. Perhaps she’ll look at the list of things von Linden wants her to write about. Thibaut will have to find it, which should be fun to watch.
It seems clear that the narrator isn’t just writing this so she can share military secrets with von Linden—she has some ulterior motive to write, if she’s so concerned about finishing before her two weeks are up. But for now, she doesn’t reveal what that purpose is, besides memorializing Maddie. It also seems as though the narrator realizes she has to tell von Linden something useful in order to be able to keep writing, which is why she sends Thibaut to go find the list. In doing so, the narrator gets to exercise some small bit of power over Thibaut.
Themes
Random Aircraft. The narrator lists aircraft types, including the Puss Moth, the Lysander, and the Avro Anson.
Resorting to listing aircraft like this reflects the narrator’s exhaustion—having to write under these circumstances is taking its toll.
Themes
Air Taxi with the ATA. The British, the narrator explains, use the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) to ferry planes and pilots to repair sites and operational bases. Early in the war, Dympna was a ferry pilot, and one day when she delivered three pilots to Maidsend, she invited Maddie to come fly the Anson, a complex twin-engine plane—which Maddie had never flown. Queenie approached just as Dympna made another appeal. Dympna invited Queenie to join them, but Queenie refused and noted that Maddie had never flown a plane like that. Maddie knew she shouldn’t do it—but it had been so long since she flew a plane. She told Queenie to pretend she was Jamie, and Queenie agreed.
Dympna seems to understand how Maddie feels about flying, and she wants to help Maddie get some sort of satisfaction. To Maddie, this seems like another bad idea—she’s not authorized to fly right now, after all—and Queenie seems to support Maddie’s misgivings. But ultimately, Maddie’s desire to fly wins out over everything else. This also speaks to how much Maddie trusts Dympna: she knows that Dympna isn’t going to let her get in trouble, or fly a plane that’s too difficult for her.
Themes
Dympna, Maddie, and Queenie approached the plane, where an American pilot heading back with them to Branston remarked on getting to fly with three women. Maddie climbed into the cockpit and studied the dials as Dympna and Queenie climbed in. After going through the checks, Maddie took off. Dympna cranked the undercarriage up and asked Queenie to help her. Queenie was clearly terrified, but Maddie successfully landed at Branston, dropped off the American, and then took off again. Dympna invited Queenie to sit in the front seat to help her motion sickness, and Maddie put her friend’s hand around the flight controls. She then lifted her own hands up—Queenie was flying the plane.
World War II clearly hasn’t done away with sexism—this American pilot is excited to fly with three women for sexual reasons, not because Maddie is extremely qualified. Still, though, this gives Maddie the opportunity to demonstrate how skilled she is, as she successfully pilots a plane that’s totally new to her. It also allows Maddie to deepen her friendship with Queenie by letting her fly the plane for a moment. In this way, she’s helping Queenie get over her fears, just as Queenie helped Maddie when they manned the antiaircraft gun.
Themes
Maddie and Queenie shared a smile and then looked forward—and shrieked. The sun was green. Dympna cursed, told Maddie to fly the plane, and 30 seconds later, the sun was back to its normal color. Dympna explained that it was just a trick of the light called the green flash. Later, when they landed at Maidsend, the girls held hands as they walked across the field.
Flying and seeing the green flash (a rare optical illusion that pilots sometimes see) makes this whole experience seem even more magical—and it deepens Maddie and Queenie’s friendship even more.
Themes
The narrator apologizes; none of that had to do with the ATA, but that flight got Maddie into the ATA. With Dympna’s prodding, the WAAF released Maddie to the ATA. The ATA don’t fly with radio or navigation aids, aside from maps—but the maps couldn’t have airfields or balloons marked in case the Germans got them. At about the same time, Queenie moved over to the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The girls swapped letters for a while, but Maddie didn’t realize what happened to Queenie. Maddie’s letters to Queenie were forwarded through Queen’s home address: Craig Castle, Castle Craig (Aberdeenshire). They only saw each other three times: when Queenie visited Maddie, when Jamie got shot down over the North Sea (he lost some fingers and all his toes), and when Queenie did her parachute training.
At this point, Maddie and Queenie’s paths diverge. Maddie finally gets to do what she loves most and fly airplanes, but Queenie’s path is a little murkier, if one takes the narration at face value. Indeed, talking about her own movements and exploits like this keeps readers (real readers and fictional Gestapo readers) at arm’s length and preserves the mystery of what, exactly, Queenie is doing with the SOE. At this point, it’s still unclear exactly why the narrator frames her narrative in this way. Meanwhile, the fact that Queenie and Maddie continue to exchange letters so regularly speaks to the strength of their friendship.
Themes
Now, von Linden is here, and the narrator will have to translate herself, since Engel isn’t here. When the narrator picks up again, she’s alone and terrified. She’d already asked von Linden for more time and had to read the bit about the cook feeling her up, and she knew she hadn’t given him anything useful. Then, he stood up, lifted the narrator’s hair, and said, “Kerosene.” He left. Now, the narrator wants to write something heroic before they burn her alive, but she can’t. All she can think of is “Kiss me, Hardy.”
In this passage, the narrator can’t ignore how much danger she’s in. Von Linden might be willing to give her what she wants (in terms of letting her write this account), but he’s still her enemy—and he can still decide that now is the time to kill her in some horribly inhumane way. Though the narrator wants to seem brave and at peace with her impending death, she can’t override the fact that she’s terrified and doesn’t want to die.
Themes
