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
Patti Love pays a visit to the police department, telling Ed and Joe that she and her husband had dinner with Chase the night before he died. In fact, he went straight from their house to the fire tower. At dinner, Patti says, he was wearing the shell necklace that he always used to wear. However, the necklace wasn’t on his body when he was found dead. This piques Ed and Joe’s interest, and they ask why Chase used to wear it all the time. Feeling uncomfortable, Patti Love tells them that the necklace was a gift from the “Marsh Girl,” with whom Chase had a relationship before—and, Patti Love thinks, possibly even after—he married his wife, Pearl. Providing the officers with her own hypothesis, Patti Love speculates that Kya killed Chase because he ended their relationship in order to marry Pearl.
At this point in their investigation, Ed and Joe finally have a concrete reason to suspect Kya of foul play. And though the disappearance of the shell necklace does seem to implicate Kya in some way, it’s worth noting that Patti Love’s confidence that Kya was the one to kill Chase seems to be informed not just by facts, but by her pre-formed ideas about Kya. This is made evident when she refers to Kya as the “Marsh Girl,” using the unkind name that the townspeople have assigned her. Given that so few people in Barkley Cove have any respect for Kya, it becomes clear in this moment that she will have an especially hard time defending herself against allegations that she killed Chase.
Themes
Ed and Joe ask Patti Love for more information about Chase’s connection to Kya, but she’s unable to give them anything more because he was so secretive about their relationship. After Patti leaves, Ed and Joe discuss this new development, pointing out that it would make sense if someone who lives in the marsh was the one to kill Chase, since “marsh people” know how to cover their tracks. Deciding to go to Kya herself, Ed and Joe go looking for her shack, but by the time they find it, she has fled. As they stand outside the small structure, they feel as if she’s most likely watching them from somewhere nearby. Because they see that it’ll be impossible to find her, they decide to leave, figuring that they can always try to get a warrant later on in the process.
When Ed and Joe suggest that it would make sense if “marsh people” were responsible for Chase’s death, readers see the ways in which their socioeconomic prejudices inform their detective work. Unfortunately for Kya, her identity as an outsider makes her an especially vulnerable suspect—a dynamic that she ultimately exacerbates by running from Ed and Joe when they come to see her, though this response to their arrival is in keeping with her ordinary habits, since she’s so wary of outsiders and intruders.
Themes
