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 now Katharina “Käthe” Habicht. She sleeps in Etienne’s room and has stolen some of his things, such as a Swiss pocketknife and this notebook. In it, on a page dated 1928, Etienne decided to be a nature enthusiast and wrote out a list of birds. What made Etienne transform into a Nazi? It’s so sad.
Maddie met Etienne not long ago. She, Amélie, and Mitraillette were out on bicycles looking for landing fields and ran into Etienne on the way back. When confronted with people, Maddie is only supposed to act “too shy to deserve to live” and, if people get too nosy, burst into tears. Maddie, as Käthe, is supposed to understand German, so as the siblings spoke in Alsatian German, Maddie had to pretend to understand and listen carefully for her code word. She didn’t understand what anyone was saying but noticed when Etienne and Amélie started fighting. Then, Mitraillette started swearing at Etienne, and he left. Mitraillette switched to cursing in English and French once he was out of earshot.
For her Käthe persona, Maddie draws on stereotypes and assumptions about women in order to keep herself safe. If she’s too shy and emotional—that is, too feminine to even function in society—then she’ll never have to speak to anyone and blow her cover. It’s unclear exactly what happens between the Thibaut siblings, but it seems as though Mitraillette isn’t afraid of her brother—and is, perhaps, willing to call him out when he does things she doesn’t approve of.
Themes
Over the last few days, Amélie has explained to Maddie that she was making fun of Etienne’s bruise, so he told her what happens to prisoners who refuse to speak. Amélie is extremely disturbed, mostly because she thought the Gestapo captain was like a priest and plays by the rules. But it doesn’t sit well with her that he’s responsible for shoving pins under people’s toenails. According to Etienne, they stick pins in women’s breasts instead of under their toes. This is when, during the original conversation, Mitraillette got angry; she asked if Etienne enjoyed it. He said he didn’t. Maddie has been telling Amélie not to think about it. Julie needs Maddie. What can Maddie do?
Learning about how von Linden tortures his prisoners forces Amélie to rethink her assessment of the Nazis as bad, but not that bad. Before, she could ignore that he’s responsible for causing people pain and killing them—but now, she can’t anymore. In this sense, Amélie is being forced to grow up long before she’s ready to do so. And Etienne’s description of how the Gestapo tortures prisoners starts to explain what Julie probably suffered but didn’t describe in her own account.
Themes
