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
In court, Eric calls a new witness to the stand. This man is the driver of the Trailways bus, which operates between Barkley Cove and Greenville. He is also the driver who was on duty the night that Chase died. Answering Eric’s questions, the driver confirms that it would have been possible for Kya to take the bus to Greenville in the daytime, then bus back to Barkley Cove at night, kill Chase, and return to Greenville on the final bus. Moving on, the bus driver says—at Eric’s urging—that there was a thin passenger on the 11:50 p.m. bus on the night of Chase’s murder. Although this passenger appeared to be a skinny man, the driver says that it’s possible it could have been Kya in disguise.
The driver’s testimony threatens to upend Kya’s alibi by suggesting that she might not have actually been in Greenville when Chase died. If this is true, though, there arises a question: would she really go so far out of her way—creating false alibis, dressing in disguises—just to take revenge on Chase? On the one hand, this meticulous devotion to violence doesn’t necessarily accord with her identity as a rather meek person who likes to keep to herself. On the other hand, though, readers have already seen that she believes in using whatever power is available to her to protect herself from anything that might pose a threat to her wellbeing. With these two considerations in mind, then, it remains unclear whether or not Kya killed Chase.
Themes
When Tom questions the driver of the 11:50 p.m. bus from Greenville to Barkley Cove, he asks if he’s sure that the skinny passenger was Kya dressed up as a man. Somewhat disoriented, the driver admits that, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t think he can recall accurately enough to say whether or not Kya was really on the bus. He also notes that he felt surer of this possibility when he initially spoke to Ed, who helped “jog” his memory. Now, though, it seems too hard to say one way or the other.
Either intentionally or not, when the driver says that Ed helped “jog” his memory, he gives the jury the impression that the sheriff asked him leading questions. In other words, Ed’s investigation comes to seem biased against Kya, perhaps because Ed himself has bought into the mysterious lore surrounding Kya and her alternative lifestyle.
Themes
Once Tom sits back down, Eric calls his next witness—the driver of 2:30 a.m. bus from Barkley Cove to Greenville. There are no other buses between 11:50 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., so Kya would have had to murder Chase in this window of time. Eric asks the driver of the 2:30 a.m. bus if it’s possible that Kya was on his bus disguised as a small old woman. “Yes, I guess,” the driver replies. When Tom approaches the bench for cross-examination, he says that the word “guess” has no place in a murder trial. The only questions he asks is whether or not the driver saw Kya on the bus, and the driver says that he did not.
Once again, Tom frames the prosecution’s arguments against Kya as nothing more than biased speculation. Given that Kya’s life is on the line, he implies, the jury should not base their judgment on a bus driver’s best “guess” as to what happened on the night of Chase’s death. By pointing this out, Tom reminds the jury to approach the case with objectivity instead of falling prey to various biases and prejudices that people have about Kya.
Themes
