Where the Crawdads Sing

“‘Kya, ya be careful, hear. If anybody comes, don’t go in the house. They can get ya there. Run deep in the marsh, hide in the bushes. Always cover yo’ tracks; I learned ya how. And ya can hide from Pa, too.’” 

Jodie’s last piece of advice before leaving Kya emphasizes the idea that the marsh is a retreat and a place of protection. It also emphasizes the marsh dwellers’ distrust of outsiders. Kya fully embraces these perspectives.

“Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.” 

Left alone in the marsh as a young girl, Kya sees it as nurturing. This attitude toward nature endures until she is confronted by outside figures against whom the marsh is no protection.

“She knew the owner, Mr. Johnny Lane, always referred to her family as swamp trash, but dealing with him, the storms, and tides would be worth it, because all she could think of now was getting back into that space of grass and sky and water [.…] There was something else, too. The calmness of the boy. She’d never known anybody to speak or move so steady. So sure and easy. Just being near him, and not even that close, had eased her tightness. For the first time since Ma and Jodie left, she breathed without pain; felt something other than the hurt. She needed this boat and that boy.” 

Kya is keenly aware of her outsider status and has an inkling that a relationship with Tate could be a lifeline to the outside world. Her desire for Tate and the boat highlight her desire for connection because of her loneliness.

“‘I wish those people wouldn’t come to town. Look at her. Filthy. Plumb nasty. There’s that stomach flu goin’ around and I just know for a fact it came in with them. Last year they brought in that case of measles, and that’s serious.’ Teresa walked away, clutching the child.’” 

Teresa Wilson, the Methodist minister’s wife, expresses the town’s prejudice against poor white marsh dwellers. Her statements are an example of the way people from the town exclude people from the marsh. The irony is that as a Christian, she should show charity toward a person in a need, especially a child. Instead, she labels Kya a carrier of contagion, dehumanizing her and developing an important theme—the importance of belonging and exclusion.

“Buying her own gas and groceries surely made her a grown-up. Later, at the shack when she unpacked the tiny pile of supplies, she saw a yellow-and-red surprise at the bottom of the bag. Not too grown-up for a Sugar Daddy Jumpin’ had dropped inside.” 

An important character trait of Kya’s—her self-reliance—is valued among people who live in the marsh. But as her delight at the sweet treat Jumpin’ has hidden in her bag shows, even those who are extremely good at taking care of themselves need human connection.

“Kya’s heart filled with wonder that someone had such a collection of rare feathers that he could spare this one. Since she couldn’t read Ma’s old guidebook, she didn’t know the names for most of the birds or insects, so made up her own. And even though she couldn’t write, Kya had found a way to label her specimens. Her talent had matured and now she could draw, paint, and sketch anything. Using chalks or watercolors from the Five and Dime, she sketched the birds, insects, or shells on grocery bags and attached them to her samples.” 

Kya’s ability to combine the eye of the artist and the scientist in her illustrations of the marsh later allows her to become a writer and biologist. This early description of her efforts shows that she practices her craft with few supplies—another sign of her self-reliance and creativity.

“Jodie had said that if a bird becomes different from the others—disfigured or wounded—it is more likely to attract a predator, so the rest of the flock will kill it, which is better than drawing in an eagle, who might take one of them in the bargain.” 

This passage is one of the instances in which Kya attempts to use nature to understand human behavior. In this case, the flock of hens attacking a cast-out hen will soon echo the way a group of boys taunts Kya as an outsider.

“The voices got louder. ‘Here we come, Marsh Girl!’ ‘Hey—ya in thar? Miss Missin’ Link!’ ‘Show us yo’ teeth! Show us yo’ swamp grass!’ Peals of laughter. She ducked lower behind the half wall of the porch as the footsteps moved closer. The flames flickered madly, then went out altogether as five boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, ran across the yard. All talking stopped as they galloped full speed to the porch and tagged the door with their palms, making slapping sounds. Every smack a stab in the turkey hen’s heart.” 

Kya uses the language of nature to compare her treatment by town boys to the way the rest of the flock attacked the turkey hen that was different. In addition, this passage foreshadows the way the town will turn on Kya when Chase is murdered.

“Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: ‘There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ ‘You can read, Kya. There will never be a time again when you can’t read.’ ‘It ain’t just that.’ She spoke almost in a whisper. ‘I wadn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.’” 

Learning to read is one of the few connections Kya has to the outside world. This passage captures the moment when Kya comes to understand the potential of language to communicate. Since she eventually becomes a writer, this moment of recognition is also an important rite of passage.

“Wonders and real-life knowledge she would’ve never learned in school. Truths everyone should know, yet somehow, even though they lay exposed all around, seemed to lie in secret like the seeds.” 

Although Kya is not formally schooled, she is educated. Her description of the knowledge she receives from The Sand County Almanac shows her recognition that the self-education she manages to achieve is much more valuable than the education she would have received in the public schools of the town.

“Kya dropped her eyes as her whole body blushed. Of course, there’d been no Ma to tell her, but indeed a school booklet Tate had brought explained some. Now her time had come, and here she was sitting on the beach becoming a woman right in front of a boy. Shame and panic filled her. What was she supposed to do? What exactly would happen? How much blood would there be? She imagined it leaking into the sand around her. She sat silent as a sharp pain racked her middle.” 

Kya is self-conscious because she recognizes that getting her first period is an important rite of passage into womanhood. She feels socially isolated from other women in this moment because this important rite occurs in the presence of a boy rather than her mother.

“Her collections matured, categorized methodically by order, genus, and species; by age according to bone wear; by size in millimeters of feathers; or by the most fragile hues of greens. The science and art entwined in each other’s strengths: the colors, the light, the species, the life; weaving a masterpiece of knowledge and beauty that filled every corner of her shack. Her world. She grew with them—the trunk of the vine—alone, but holding all the wonders together. But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness.”

Kya comes into her own as a writer and a biologist. Her awareness of how lonely she is explains in large part why she is vulnerable to Chase as he begins his pursuit of her, however.

“But this was too abrupt—picnic, then mate the Marsh Girl. Even male birds woo the magnificent dances and love songs. Yes, Chase had laid out a banquet, but she was worth more than fried chicken. And “Dixie” didn’t count as a love song. She should’ve known it would be like this. Only time male mammals hover is when they’re in the rut.”

Kya uses her knowledge of nature to critique Chase’s self-centered pursuit of her. She understands that their relationship is based on physical desires, but she ignores this intuition because she is lonely.

“Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as ‘sneaky fuckers.’” 

This passage represents strong foreshadowing that harmonica-playing Chase is nothing more than a “sneaky fucker” who will mislead Kya in order to secure sex with her.

“Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.” 

Although Kya sees nature as a guide to human behavior, she still has a desire to see human beings as something more than animals driven by an instinct to survive and mate at all costs.

“Before, during all those almost-times, when she had stopped him, his wandering fingers had taken on a magical touch, bringing parts of her to life, causing her body to arch toward him, to long and want. But now, with permission finally granted, an urgency gripped him and he seemed to bypass her needs and push his way. She cried out against a sharp tearing, thinking something was wrong. ‘It’s okay. It’ll be better now,’ he said with great authority. But it didn’t get much better, and soon he fell to her side, grinning. As he passed into sleep, she watched the blinking lights of the Vacancy.”

The motel vacancy sign represents how unfulfilled Kya is by her sexual encounter with Chase. He ignores her needs because he doesn’t care about her feelings, and she senses their lack of emotional connection during the act.

“Now in her hands, the final copy—every brushstroke, every carefully thought-out color, every word of the natural histories, printed in a book. There were also drawings of the creatures who live inside—how they eat, how they move, how they mate—because people forget about creatures who live in shells. She touched the pages and remembered each shell and the story of finding it, where it lay on the beach, the season, the sunrise. A family album.” 

The publication of the book represents Kya’s achievement of her identity as a writer. Referring to the book as a family album makes it clear that she still feels a close kinship with nature as a force for nurturing even as she engages with it as a writer and scientist.

“More than anyone else, she had wanted to see Jodie or Ma again. Her heart had erased the scar and all the pain in that package. No wonder her mind buried the scene; no wonder Ma had left. Hit by a poker across the chest. Kya saw those rubbed-out stains on the flowered sundress as blood again.” 

The reunion with Jodie shocks Kya into remembering the traumatic events that drove Ma away. This moment is an important one because it forces her to see Ma’s actions in a new light. This re-evaluation of Ma is an important sign that she will eventually heal emotionally from her early childhood trauma.

“‘In nature—out yonder where the crawdads sing—these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation. And on and on. It happens in humans, too.’” 

Although Kya has greater context for understanding Ma’s actions, she makes the judgment that Ma’s abandonment of the family had a moral dimension that casts Ma in a poor light as a mother. Kya believes, in other words, that people should be more than animals driven by their instincts for survival.

“She’d brought this on herself. Consorting unchaperoned. A natural wanting had led her unmarried to a cheap motel, but still unsatisfied. Sex under flashing neon lights, marked only by blood smudged across the sheets like animal tracks. Chase had probably bragged about their doings to everyone. No wonder people shunned her—she was unfit, disgusting.” 

Kya’s feelings of shame and self-blame are typical for assault victims. Her sense that she is somehow to blame for Chase’s attack shows that she has internalized the town’s dehumanizing perspective on her as someone who is not worthy. The self-hatred in this passage is also a direct reflection of the sexism that is part of her culture.

“The language of the court was, of course, not as poetic as the language of the marsh. Yet Kya saw similarities in their natures.” 

Kya continues to use what she knows of nature to understand human behavior. She labels the men in the court according to her understanding of the law as a system that privileges men and high status.

“‘But, ladies and gentlemen, did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her? If we had taken her in as one of our own—I think that is what she would be today. If we had fed, clothed, and loved her, invited her into our churches and homes, we wouldn’t be prejudiced against her. And I believe she would not be sitting here today accused of a crime.’”

Tom Milton’s closing argument calls out the town for its exclusion of Kya because of her difference from them, a central theme in this novel. The jury acquits Kya because they have had to acknowledge their moral responsibility for Kya’s predicament.

“A lady from New York opened a gift shop that sold everything the villagers didn’t need but every tourist had to have. Almost every shop had a special table displaying the books by Catherine Danielle Clark ~ Local Author ~ Award-Winning Biologist.” 

The ubiquity of Kya’s books shows that she has at last secured a place in the town because of her writing and the town’s acceptance of her as a part of their community. This process takes years, however.