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
Pa dresses in his nicest clothes one morning and informs Kya that he will be gone for roughly four days because he needs to go to Asheville to ask the army to increase the amount of his disability checks. Without saying anything in return, she watches him walk down the lane, and though she doesn’t expect him to, he turns back at the end of it and waves to her. Once Pa is gone, Kya walks to where Pa keeps his small, beat-up motorboat. Although she used to go out in the boat with Jodie, she has never taken it out on her own, though this doesn’t stop her from getting in. Before starting the engine, she checks the gas, both to make sure there’s enough and to know how much she’ll have to refill so Pa won’t know she used the boat.
Although Pa is violent and mean, it’s noteworthy that he turns back at the end of the lane and waves farewell to Kya. He also tells her where he’s going before he leaves, something that Ma neglected to do. In this small way, then, Pa comforts Kya by making sure she knows that he isn’t abandoning her. This, it seems, is one of the only kind things he has ever done for his daughter, and though it’s not much, it suggests that he is perhaps capable of connecting with Kya in some small way. All the same, though, Kya remains quite independent, as evidenced not only by her decision to use the boat by herself, but by her mature impulse to check the gas before leaving. The more she has to fend for herself, it seems, the more capable she is of navigating her way through an otherwise difficult life.
Themes
Kya starts the engine and putters into the marsh, remembering that Jodie instructed her to go left at every fork in the water in order to reach the ocean. As she goes, she notices that the tide is going out, knowing that this means she’ll have to turn around before too long or else risk running aground on her way back. Upon finally reaching the ocean, she’s daunted by the churning waves and a stand of dark clouds towering over the water, so she turns around and tries to find her way home. At one point, she passes a boy several years older than her. He’s fishing in his own boat, and she would have avoided him if there were any other choice but to motor right by him. As she passes, he touches the bill of his baseball cap in a gentlemanly fashion.
Kya is unaccustomed to human interaction, especially with people outside her own family. For this reason, her impulse is to hide from the boy in the marsh, clearly wanting to preserve her independence. This makes sense, considering that her dealings with other people have only ever ended either in disappointment or emotional pain. In this moment, then, readers see how Kya has been impacted by familial abandonment, as well as by the intolerance of the townspeople—experiences that have had long-lasting effects in the guarded way she moves through the world.
Themes
Despite her ability to find the ocean on her way out, Kya doesn’t recognize her surroundings. Lost, she sits in the boat for a moment and considers her options. She is running low on gas, and there’s a storm coming. Begrudgingly, then, she turns around and motors back to the boy she saw fishing, and he greets her kindly, telling her that he hopes she isn’t going out to the ocean, since a storm’s about to hit. She only looks down and says that she isn’t going to the ocean, and he senses there’s something wrong. The boy asks if Kya is lost, and she nods and tries to hold back tears. He tells her not to worry about it, saying that he, too, gets lost sometimes. The boy also mentions that he knows Kya, since he used to fish with Jodie.
Kya’s past experiences with other people have been exceedingly negative, which is why she’s hesitant to ask for help from a stranger. However, this boy’s kindness seems genuine, since there’s very little he could possibly gain by tricking her into trusting him. Consequently, this is one of the first interactions Kya has with a person from the outside world that doesn’t leave her feeling abandoned or inferior, though she remains uncomfortable because she isn’t used to putting her fate into the hands of someone else.
Themes
The boy Kya meets in the swamp knows where she lives because he used to fish with Jodie, so he leads her home in his boat. When they arrive, he introduces himself as Tate before leaving. On her own, Kya worries about how much gas she used, knowing that she’ll have to fill it back up before Pa returns. She also thinks about how scared she was when she was alone and facing the ocean in the boat, though now this only registers as excitement. What’s more, she can’t stop thinking about Tate, who was so calm and levelheaded that simply being in his presence soothed her. Kya realizes that being with him was the first time since Ma and Jodie left that she felt something other than sorrow.
The reason that Kya feels so good after interacting with Tate is that he is one of the only people in her entire life who has gone out of his way to help her. Without Ma and Jodie, Kya has taught herself to distrust others, mostly because she no longer has anyone to turn to in times of hardship. Now, though, Tate’s selflessness shows her that it’s perhaps a bit too early to give up on trusting others.
Themes
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That afternoon, Tate walks through Barkley Cove and meets his father, Scupper, at his shrimp boat. Together, they work on the boat before going home for dinner. As they eat, Tate looks at a picture of his mother and sister and thinks momentarily about the fact that they would be alive if it weren’t for him, though he doesn’t say this to his father. Instead, they talk about school, and Tate complains about having to memorize a poem for his English class. Telling him not to be so critical of poetry, Scupper reads him a poem that his mother used to love, insisting that the entire point of reading poetry is to feel something. This aligns with his belief that a real man “cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.”
The kindness that Tate showed Kya in the marsh makes sense, since his father goes out of his way to teach him to do “what’s necessary to defend a woman.” Moreover, Scupper emphasizes that it’s all right for a man to be in touch with his emotions, which is perhaps why Tate finds it easy to empathize with Kya, a girl upon whom everyone else casts unfair judgment based on her socioeconomic status. In addition, Tate has apparently lost his mother and sister, and though the circumstances of this situation aren’t yet clear, the fact that he has been separated from his loved ones puts him in a position to understand—to a certain extent—Kya’s familial losses.
Themes
That night, Tate reads more poetry, coming across one poem that reminds him of Kya. This causes him to think about how lonesome and vulnerable she seemed when he saw her in the marsh. He then wonders how he would feel if his own sister was still alive and had been left alone in the wilderness. Thinking this way, he realizes that Scupper is right—poetry really does make people feel things.
Even at this early stage, it’s rather clear that Tate and Kya will have a special connection, since they both spend time thinking about each other after only having interacted once. What’s more, Tate’s ability to empathize with Kya’s situation despite the fact that he lives in town suggests that he’s a sensitive and kind young man—the sort of person who empathizes with other people’s experiences instead of judging them and focusing exclusively on himself.
Themes
