Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Noughts and Crosses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Division, and Tragedy
Awareness and Privilege
Love, Lust, Power, and Violence
Friendship
Youth, Innocence, and Growing Up
Family
Summary
Analysis
As Sephy watches Mother drink wine, she realizes it’s been a long time since she’s seen Mother without a wine glass in hand. She startles Mother by asking her if she can have a party for her 14th birthday. Mother looks up from her glossy magazine filled with beautiful dark-skinned women—and Sephy realizes there are never nought women in the magazines. The first nought model was featured in a magazine last year. Sephy comes back to the present when Mother agrees to the party (she must have had a lot to drink to be in such a good mood). On some level, Sephy resents the wine for making Mother happy, when she and Minnie clearly can’t.
Sephy is continuing to become more aware of how her world is structurally racist as she realizes the magazines only feature Cross models. In this society, noughts aren’t seen as being as beautiful as Crosses. In addition, Sephy also struggles to feel like Mother actually loves or support her when Mother only seems happy when she’s drinking. So Sephy not only feels inadequate, but as though she also can’t trust Mother’s good mood to be genuine.
Themes
When Mother gives Sephy the option of a magician or an entertainer, Sephy reminds Mother she’s turning 14—and then says she’d like an entertainer. Mother tells Sephy to go tell Sarah to plan it. This shouldn’t be a surprise; Mother and Mr. Hadley never even buy Sephy’s birthday and Crossmas presents themselves. Sarah does and she has good taste, but Sephy never uses those gifts. Sephy figures that just like the gifts don’t matter to her parents, she doesn’t matter to them either. Only one person matters and now, it’s up to Sephy to show him he matters. She’s going to surprise Mother and everyone else at her party and expose them for the racist hypocrites they are.
At first, Sephy tries to insist that she’s too old for such childish entertainment. But Sephy is still very young, as she hasn’t been forced to grow up yet, so she’s ultimately fine agreeing to have an entertainer at her birthday party. She also elaborates more as to why she feels like her parents don’t care—they never buy her gifts to show her they know what she likes. All of this causes Sephy to turn away from her family and to turn toward Callum (the “one person” who matters), though her plan to expose everyone as racist seems questionable.
Themes
