Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Where the Crawdads Sing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival, Necessity, and Violence
Independence vs. Human Connection
Education, Coming of Age, and Adulthood
Prejudice, Intolerance, and Acceptance
Summary
Analysis
Tate doesn’t come back right away to teach Kya how to read, and she gets tired of waiting for him. Consequently, Kya decides to visit Mabel to give her some jam, though the real reason she wants to see Mabel is simply that she wants to spend time with another person. On her way to “Colored Town,” Kya hears voices, jumps into the woods, and watches as a group of white boys walk down the road, taunting a black man ahead of them by calling him racial slurs and throwing rocks at him. Suddenly, Kya realizes that the man is Jumpin’, so she bursts out of the woods just after he turns a corner, cutting off the boys and hitting them with her sack, which is full of jam jars. She easily takes them on, and they go running in the other direction. Flustered, Kya goes home, too.
Once more, readers see that the area in which Kya lives is plagued by discrimination and intolerance. Moreover, though, Kya’s decision to defend Jumpin’ is quite noteworthy, since it indicates that she feels strongly for him. Given that she’s such a reclusive person who has very few human relationships, her willingness to physically defend Jumpin’ is especially significant, suggesting that she is loyal to the few people in her life upon whom she can count. It also indicates that she has no sympathy for people who are prejudiced or intolerant of others and is willing to take violent measures when she thinks it’s necessary to do so.
Themes
In the coming weeks, Tate comes whenever he can to help Kya learn to read. One day, she asks if he lives with his family in town, and he says he lives alone with his father. Thinking that Tate’s mother must have abandoned him, Kya wishes she could reach out and touch his hand, though she can’t bring herself to do this, instead simply gazing at the complex and delicate veins that run just beneath the surface of the skin on his wrist. Each night, she practices her lessons and wonders why Tate bothered to seek her out, though she decides not to ask him this question because she doesn’t want to do anything to discourage him from coming. Above all, she’s excited to label the many insects, shells, and feathers she’s collected over the years, looking up their names and writing them beneath her paintings of each specimen.
Tate serves a dual purpose in Kya’s life. As her teacher, he gives her the gift of knowledge, enabling her not only to read, but to interact with the world around her more deeply—something that makes her very happy and allows her to more thoroughly concentrate on life in the marsh. As Tate teaches her, though, he also becomes her closest human connection. That Taste, too, has lost his mother resonates deeply with Kya, who suddenly feels as if she has found somebody who might actually understand her. And in feeling this way, Kya experiences the first pangs of romantic attraction. In turn, it becomes clear that her relationship with Tate informs her entire coming-of-age process, both in terms of her intellectual education and her emotional development.
Themes
Kya asks Tate what comes after the number 29 one day, and after he answers, he tells her that he’ll teach her some basic math. She is now quite good at reading, so she takes the family Bible off the shelf one night and flips to the back, where Ma wrote the full names and birthdates of all her family members. First, she looks for her own name, learning that she was born on October 10th, 1945. She also learns the full names of her siblings (whom she only ever knew by their nicknames) and those of her parents.
