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
Maddie is writing from England—but in her head, Ormaie is still on fire. Maybe she’ll be court-martialed or tried for murder, but all she feels is relief. However, she isn’t free; she’s under house arrest at the Cottage at the Moon Squadron Aerodrome. It doesn’t matter that there’s a guard outside. Even if Maddie does die, it’ll be a fast, humane death, and Granddad will know what happened. The Bloody Machiavellian Intelligence Officer is coming to interview Maddie (presumably without burning Maddie or sticking her with pins). Maddie feels very safe.
If Maddie is writing from England, a lot of things presumably did fall into place—but Maddie will return to this later. Maddie’s tone as she describes what might happen to her after this interview suggests that while she doesn’t regret killing Julie, she suspects that her superiors will take issue with her actions. But still, back in England, Maddie can take comfort in knowing that she won’t disappear, like Julie would’ve disappeared in France.
Themes
Now, Maddie turns to writing an incident report of the “successful sabotage and destruction” of the Ormaie Gestapo headquarters. On Saturday night, Maddie and the Resistance rode bicycles into Ormaie. They carried bombs. Once it was dark, they blew the back gate open. Mitraillette took care of the dogs, and everyone efficiently got the prisoners out, set the bombs, and got away.
What Maddie describes sounds like a straightforward and efficient operation. This is, of course, all thanks to Julie and Engel, who managed to give such clear instructions in Julie’s account. Writing this as an incident report helps Maddie distance herself from what happened, which suggests that she’s still traumatized.
Themes
Maddie decided she’d free whoever was in Julie’s cell. She had to walk through the interrogation room to get there. It smelled of vomit, ammonia, rotten meat, and burnt hair. It’s only now that Maddie has even thought about Julie having to live with that for eight weeks. In any case, Maddie and her partner rescued the man in Julie’s cell, who turned out to be a Jamaican rear gunner in the RAF. The Jamaican man was lovely; he hadn’t eaten in a week but still carried a boy with broken knees out of the hotel. They had an hour to get away from the hotel before it blew up. When it exploded, Maddie was standing on the back of a bike while the Jamaican man pedaled.
For Maddie, it’s cathartic and gratifying that she rescues whoever took Julie’s place in the cell. And this walk through the interrogation room adds a whole new layer to Julie’s account, as Julie didn’t describe the gruesome details of what it was like to live in this environment. Again, this makes it clear that Julie’s account does indeed leave out a lot of information. Maddie’s description of the rear gunner also shows that she’s encountering brave people everywhere she goes.
Themes
The force of the explosion knocked them over. Maddie laughed in the road until the rear gunner picked her up and they set off again. Maddie shared with him that she’s a shot-down airman too, and they agreed that “It’s a white man’s world.” He asked why she was crying, and Maddie shared that Julie was in the rear gunner’s cell for two months, but now she’s dead. The gunner said that his best friend is dead too; he was a pilot and flew the plane straight into the ground so everyone else could bail out. Now that Maddie writes it down, she realizes she did the exact same thing. It seemed heroic when the rear gunner told her about it, but Maddie doesn’t think of herself as heroic.
The rear gunner, being Black, no doubt faces racism as he flies, while Maddie has to worry about sexism. So, they can bond over their shared experience of feeling like they don’t exactly fit in. The rear gunner then helps Maddie feel better about her actions. Maddie hasn’t thought of herself as brave or heroic—but now, she can look back at her actions with a new perspective. Maddie killed Julie to ensure that Julie didn’t suffer, even though this meant losing her best friend and living with the guilt of killing her. In this way, Maddie’s actions are a testament to how friendship and love can motivate people to act bravely.
Themes
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Returning to the story, Maddie and the rear gunner said goodbye to the Thibauts after two nights. They had to go get the Rosalie out of the rose-grower’s garage. While they were at the villa, the old woman led Maddie through her garden to a huge pile of damask roses. She explained that they were finally allowed to bury the bodies. The men were buried up by the bridge, but the girls are buried here. Julie is buried in her great-aunt’s rose garden. Her body is wrapped in her grandmother’s first communion veil, and her grave is covered in roses. Maddie only realized at that point that this old woman was certainly Julie’s great-aunt, since Julie’s family was from Ormaie and this woman carries a “great burden” (she shot her husband). Maddie couldn’t tell her that she’d buried her own grandniece in her garden.
Visiting Julie’s grave gives Maddie some closure. She knows now that Julie’s body rests somewhere beautiful—somewhere that is, at some point in the future, going to bloom again and be full of life. Though Maddie is unable to tell the rose-grower that Julie is her grandniece, putting this together helps Maddie feel better about Julie’s death. It’s fitting that Julie is buried in her great-aunt’s garden, as in a sense, Julie has finally come home. And Maddie also realizes that she and the rose-grower have more in common than she thought, as both of them did something terrible to help those they loved.
Themes
Maddie hears a car pull up as she writes, but first, she wants to write the account of how she got out of France. It’ll make her cry. She cried most of the way through—as soon as she heard the radio message, “After a while, all children tell the truth,” it made her think of Julie. The message was in French, so the final word was “verité.” Eventually, the plane landed perfectly. Jamie leapt out and asked Maddie if she was going to fly them home. He insisted on trading places, which again made Maddie bawl. She was afraid she’d get in trouble, but she took his seat and then told him she shot Julie. Jamie said and did nothing, and then told her she had to fly home so he could think. He kept his hand on her shoulder the whole way home, just like Julie did.
Maddie never gives any insight into how the SOE chooses the radio messages, but it seems designed to give Maddie closure. It’s a nod to Julie (since it mentions her code name), and it also seems to suggest that in the end, the truth will always come out. This is, of course, what has happened with Julie’s account—Maddie and readers now know more or less what Julie was doing. The fact that Jamie is the pilot to come get Maddie makes things even more emotional. But Jamie also doesn’t seem to hold it against Maddie that she shot his sister—the news is traumatic, but he trusts that she did the right thing.
Themes
