Noughts and Crosses Themes

Noughts & Crosses takes place in an alternate universe where, instead of Europe colonizing other parts of the world, people from Africa colonized Europe. This means that Black people (who are known as Crosses) are the dominant racial group across the world, and they subjugate white people (who are known as noughts). Though the noughts’ enslavement ended about 50 years before the novel begins, the world that 13-year-old Cross Sephy and 15-year-old nought…

Teenage Sephy is a Cross (a Black person)—and she’s wealthier than most, as her father, Kamal Hadley, is the home minister in the government. Because of her racial and financial privilege, Sephy has grown up lacking nothing; she looks at the world fearlessly and expects other people to be good, kind, and helpful to her. Because of this, it’s hard for Sephy to sympathize with her best friend Callum, who’s a nought (a…

Noughts & Crosses focuses on the friendship between privileged Cross (Black person) Sephy and the nought (white person) Callum, whose family lives in poverty. The novel begins when the two are still young teenagers, and Sephy and Callum have been best friends since Sephy was born (Callum’s mother, Meggie, was Sephy’s nanny and brought young Callum to work with her). As children, Sephy and Callum can have a genuine, fulfilling friendship precisely because…

At its heart, Noughts & Crosses is a story of how Sephy, a wealthy Cross (Black person), and Callum, her poor nought (white) best friend, grow up. Sephy is 13 and Callum is 15 when the novel begins, and it follows them for the next three and a half years, as their lives take wildly different paths than they expected. For both Sephy and Callum, but to differing degrees, growing up entails becoming…

In addition to exploring Sephy and Callum’s friendship and eventual romance, Noughts & Crosses also focuses on Sephy and Callum’s families. On the one hand, Sephy’s family has never been very supportive: her father, Kamal Hadley, is a high-ranking government official who prioritizes his job over family, while Mother is an alcoholic and is arguably as checked-out as her husband. Sephy’s home life causes her to turn to Callum for support, and also…