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
Shortly after her seventh birthday, Kya is out in the marsh when she hears a car pull up to the shack. A truancy officer yells that she has come to take Kya—though she calls her by her legal name, Catherine—to school. Speaking loudly, the truancy officer promises that Kya will be able to eat a free lunch every day if she comes to school, adding that the cafeteria is making chicken pot pie that day. Because she’s hungry and has only ever eaten chicken pot pie several times, Kya emerges from the woods, and the truancy officer introduces herself as Mrs. Culpepper before going inside to help her get dressed for school. When Kya’s ready, Mrs. Culpepper extends her hand, and Kya hesitates to take it because she hasn’t touched anyone else since Jodie left. After a moment, though, she puts her hand in Mrs. Culpepper’s.
Although Kya is learning to be as independent as possible and clearly has a fear of outsiders, certain aspects of survival override her reclusiveness. Most of all, her desire to eat hearty food eclipses her impulse to stay away from Mrs. Culpepper, once more proving that survival often takes precedent over all else.
Themes
At school, the principal puts Kya in the second grade even though she’s never had any education. He does this because the first grade classrooms are too full, but he also notes that it doesn’t matter because she comes from “marsh people” and will probably only go to school for a couple of months before disappearing once more. Nervously, Kya enters the classroom and observes that, though some of the students are barefoot like her, most of them have shoes. They all stare at her when she finds her seat, and when the teacher later asks her to spell the word “dog,” she hesitates before eventually saying, “G-o-d.” Everyone laughs, and Kya slouches back into her seat, trying to make herself as small as possible.
At school, Kya encounters the kind of classist attitudes that inform her desire to stay away from Barkley Cove. Not only do her fellow students disparage her for her lack of a formal education, but even the principal writes her off because she belongs to a group known as the “marsh people.” By using this disparaging term, the principal ostracizes people like Kya from those who live in Barkley Cove, indicating that they are unworthy of respect simply because they live in poverty and don’t lead the same kind of existences as everyone else.
Themes
At lunch, nobody sits with Kya. When a group of girls approaches her table, she becomes nervous until she realizes—with a slight sense of disappointment—that they’re headed to a table behind her. Then, when nobody is looking, Kya wraps up some food, saving it for later. For the rest of the day, she doesn’t speak even when the teachers ask her to, not wanting to subject herself to humiliation. Unfortunately for her, though, she doesn’t manage to go unnoticed on the bus ride home, during which a group of children mock her and call her “marsh hen” and “swamp rat.” When Kya finally gets home, she goes to the beach and calls out to the gulls, who circle around her. Though she’s close to tears, she starts laughing when they gently peck her toes.
Venturing beyond the confines of the marsh brings Kya nothing but humiliation and pain, as children don’t hesitate to express their prejudiced ideas about people who live in poverty. In response to this intolerance, then, she tries to withdraw as much as possible, not wanting to speak to anyone and remaining uncomfortable until she finally returns to the wilderness of the marsh, where she can exist with the only beings that seem to accept her unconditionally: the seagulls.
Themes
Kya doesn’t go back to school. When Mrs. Culpepper comes to fetch her, Kya slips into the woods, running in circles to confuse the man Mrs. Culpepper has brought to chase after Kya. Each time, Kya finds it almost too easy to lose him. For the rest of her life, she never attends another day of school, instead spending her time watching herons and collecting shells—activities she thinks can teach her something useful.
Kya’s negative experience at school confirms her belief that it isn’t worth leaving the marsh. It also reinforces her idea that humans can’t be trusted, so she connects with animals and nature instead. On another note, it’s worth pointing out that Kya is quite good at using the marsh to her advantage when trying to hide—a fact that will become important later in the novel, when people begin to get suspicious of her because of her alternative lifestyle.
Themes
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While playing alone one day, Kya jumps from a tree and lands on a rusty nail. Instantly, she calls out to Pa, but he’s nowhere to be found. As she reels in pain, she remembers what Jodie told her about lockjaw, suddenly worrying that the nail will give her tetanus, which is what happened to a boy Jodie knew. Limping toward the shack, she remembers that Ma used to put saltwater on cuts and then cake a mixture of vitamin-rich mud onto the wound, so she puts her foot in a salty stream trickling through the marsh. After washing out the cut, she digs a hole in the mud and puts her foot into the earth, all while opening and closing her jaw so that it doesn’t lock up. That night, Pa doesn’t come home, and she falls asleep waiting for him, wondering if she’ll ever wake up.
When Kya injures herself and has nobody to turn to for help, readers see just how dangerous it is for a seven-year-old to sustain herself like this in the wilderness. And yet, she once again rises to the challenge of caring for herself, jumping to action to ensure that the cut doesn’t become infected. Of course, nothing that she does would prevent her from getting tetanus, but her efforts to clean her wound will at least do something to fight off infection. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that she turns to the marsh itself to help her in this time of duress, a sign that the land is her keeper.
Themes
In the morning, Kya’s jaw hasn’t locked up, but she still makes her way back to the stream to treat her foot. She does this for the next several days, until it becomes clear that she doesn’t have tetanus. Pa still hasn’t come home, so she survives on Crisco and saltines. Meanwhile, she listens intently each morning for Ma, hoping to hear her in the kitchen, though this never happens. Pa, on the other hand, does come home, and fall turns into winter. Finally, Kya admits once and for all that Ma isn’t coming home, deciding that her true mother will be the marsh.
It makes sense that Kya decides that her real mother will be the marsh, since she has already turned to the mud and water for help. Unlike her mother, upon whom she cannot depend, the earth itself has helped her get through a rather serious injury. In turn, Kya comes to see the marsh as something that will help her subsist on her own despite her trying circumstances.
Themes
