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
Sephy’s insistence that they’re going to kill her keeps running through Callum’s head, making it impossible to sleep. Leila comes in to pee, and Callum scolds her for leaving the front unguarded. But just after she heads out the door again, there’s a commotion out front. It’s not the police—it’s a tall blond man with expensive boots, and he has Leila in a headlock. The man asks Callum and Morgan who’s in charge and says he’s not impressed with the cell. He gives the password on the second try and introduces himself as Andrew Dorn, the General’s second-in-command.
Callum seems to not have considered that the cell might kill Sephy, which shows that in some ways, Callum is still a naïve, idealistic kid. However, he’s ripped back into his dangerous adult reality with Andrew Dorn’s arrival. The fact that Andrew needs two attempts to get the password, and that he seems so openly disgusted with the cell, puts Callum on his guard. The stakes are getting higher.
Themes
Morgan and Leila return to their guard posts and Andrew asks to see the prisoner. Callum unlocks the bedroom door. Sephy is awake and as Andrew tells her he hopes Mr. Hadley really loves her, Callum notices Sephy startle as she sees Andrew’s boots. The boots are brown with silver chains—ostentatious, but Callum doesn’t know what’s otherwise wrong with them. Once Callum and Andrew have left the bedroom, Andrew tells Callum to not let Sephy leave the room alive. Callum says he’ll take care of it.
Andrew’s boots seem very similar to the ones worn by the nought man that Sephy saw speaking with Mr. Hadley years ago—suggesting that Andrew might be a double agent. Andrew’s insistence that Sephy should die then seems even more sinister. It’s unclear whose side he’s actually on—or if Sephy could be safer than she thinks she is.
Themes
