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
Unlike swamps, which are murky and dark, marshes are open and airy, with water trickling through rustling grass. There are, however, patches of swampiness in each marsh, where things can be hidden and claimed by thick mud. It is in one of these soupy places that two local boys find Chase Andrews’s dead body on the morning of October 30, 1969. Chase is in the swamp, which is (as a place teeming with life) familiar with death—a natural, common thing.
Even as early as the prologue, Delia Owens calls attention to the relationship between nature and survival, suggesting that the swamp—which represents the visceral, untamed side of life—is accustomed to death because it is so common. Survival, Owens intimates in this moment, is something bound for failure, something that can only last so long. After all, the fact that Chase’s dead body isn’t particularly out of the ordinary in the grand scheme of nature suggests that even humans, who are otherwise so good at survival, eventually succumb to death.
Themes
