Noughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses

by

Malorie Blackman

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Noughts and Crosses makes teaching easy.

Love, Lust, Power, and Violence Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Racism, Division, and Tragedy Theme Icon
Awareness and Privilege Theme Icon
Love, Lust, Power, and Violence Theme Icon
Friendship Theme Icon
Youth, Innocence, and Growing Up Theme Icon
Family Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Noughts and Crosses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love, Lust, Power, and Violence Theme Icon

Noughts & Crosses is very concerned with love and romance. The romance between privileged Cross Sephy and nought Callum starts off innocently enough: as young teenagers and best friends spending an idyllic afternoon on the beach, Callum asks to kiss Sephy just to see what it’s like. But their romance is forbidden because they’re of two different races, and their relationship grows increasingly passionate and violent as racism and segregation reshape their lives and start to pull them apart. Particularly for Callum, who becomes progressively angrier over the course of the novel’s span of three and a half years, it’s nearly impossible to separate his love for Sephy from his desire to hurt or kill her—and everyone else who looks like her. Through their relationship, Noughts & Crosses presents love (and especially that between people of different skin colors) not as something sweet and pleasant, but as something intimately and confusingly interwoven with violence, fear, and danger.

Sephy and Callum’s relationship isn’t the only romance in the novel to be tinged with violence. Both their parents’ marriages are plagued by physical and/or verbal abuse, and Callum’s older sister Lynette’s interracial relationship ended tragically when she and her boyfriend were beaten almost to death. The violence that tinges every romance in the novel reaches a horrific climax when Callum is executed for supposedly raping Sephy—despite both him and Sephy insisting that the sex they had was consensual. But in their society, where love between noughts and Crosses is forbidden (and criminalized when it does happen), romance is seemingly doomed from the start to end violently.

Related Themes from Other Texts
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Love, Lust, Power, and Violence ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Love, Lust, Power, and Violence appears in each chapter of Noughts and Crosses. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Get the entire Noughts and Crosses LitChart as a printable PDF.
Noughts and Crosses PDF

Love, Lust, Power, and Violence Quotes in Noughts and Crosses

Below you will find the important quotes in Noughts and Crosses related to the theme of Love, Lust, Power, and Violence.
Chapter 26 Quotes

“Because her boyfriend was a Cross. Your sister was beaten and l-left for dead because she was dating a Cross. And she didn’t even tell us. She was afraid of what we’d all say. So is it any wonder that she can’t bear to think of herself as one of us anymore? Is it any wonder she can’t even leave this house anymore? Her mind hasn’t been right since ’cause she’s still hurting.”

Related Characters: Ryan McGregor/Dad (speaker), Callum McGregor, Jude McGregor, Lynette McGregor, Jed
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 77 Quotes

“You stupid girl. Who d’you think paid for their lawyer and all their legal fees?” Mother took hold of my shoulders and shook me. “I prayed and paid and did everything I could to make sure that Ryan wouldn’t hang. What more could I have done? You tell me.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Hadley/Mother (speaker), Sephy Hadley, Meggie McGregor/Mum, Ryan McGregor/Dad, Kelani Adams
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 80 Quotes

When I’d come into her room, I’d been burning up with the desire to smash her and everything else around her. Sephy was a Cross I could actually hurt. And yet here she was, asleep and still holding on to my arms like I was a life raft or something. There’s not an inch of space between her body and mine. I could move my hands and…And. Anything I liked. Caress or strangle. Kill or cure. Her or me. Me or her.

Related Characters: Callum McGregor (speaker), Sephy Hadley, Ryan McGregor/Dad
Page Number: 339
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 94 Quotes

And we’d succeeded. We had Sephy. No! Not Sephy…Just a Cross girl—who deserved everything she got, who’d get us everything we needed. I paused outside the cell door. I could do this. I had to do this.

Be what you have to be, Callum, not what you are…

I repeated that phrase over and over in my head, the way I used to do when I first joined the LM. The way I had to whenever there was something…distasteful that needed to be done.

Related Characters: Callum McGregor (speaker), Sephy Hadley
Page Number: 391
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 96 Quotes

The cut was deep—for both of us. Deeper than I’d intended. A scratch would’ve been deeper than I intended. She went to put her finger back in her mouth but I grabbed her hand again. She struggled, trying to pull her hand away. Maybe she thought I was going to cut her again. I put her finger in my mouth.

Related Characters: Callum McGregor (speaker), Sephy Hadley
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 101 Quotes

Ashamed of myself for having asked, I tried to turn my head away, but Callum’s restraining hand on my cheek stopped me. He carried on rubbing my stomach. We watched each other in a silence that surrounded us like a bubble of barbed wire.

Related Characters: Sephy Hadley (speaker), Callum McGregor
Page Number: 418
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 113 Quotes

“No, he just raped you and made you pregnant instead,” Dad said bitterly.

“Kamal, please—,” Mother began.

“Callum didn’t rape me. He didn’t.”

“But you’re pregnant, so he must’ve.” Mother frowned.

“I’m pregnant because we made love to each other,” I shouted angrily.

Related Characters: Sephy Hadley (speaker), Mrs. Hadley/Mother (speaker), Mr. Kamal Hadley (speaker), Callum McGregor
Page Number: 462
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 116 Quotes

Once I’d been found guilty nothing on earth could’ve made the judges overturn the verdict. The reason is simple. I’m a nought who dared to fall in love with a Cross. And worse still, I actually made love with her. And worse than that, she’s pregnant with my child and doesn’t care who knows it.

Related Characters: Callum McGregor (speaker), Sephy Hadley, Ryan McGregor/Dad
Page Number: 480
Explanation and Analysis: