PMC Comparative

Comparative 2023

Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

___________________________________________________________________________

“How much do you trade to defeat lonesomeness?”

Characters
• Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) • Jumpin’
• Tate • Mabel
• Chase Andrews • Robert Foster
• Ma • Judge Sims
• Jodie • Tom Milton
• Pa

Setting
• Barkley Cove
• North Carolina
• 1950s & 1960s

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Themes
• Family
• Love
• Isolation
• Identity
• Justice
• Coming-of-Age

Any others?
1. ______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
4. ______________________
5. ______________________

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➢ The novel begins with a prologue. This is a significant aspect of Literary Genre. It is a literary
device used by the author for a number of reasons. It introduces tension and anticipation
into the story from the start, creating curiosity. It also helps give the novel a circular structure.
By opening with events that will unfold and be explained at the end of the novel, the author
is giving her story a clear structure and identity. This novel is, at heart, a mystery.
➢ The prologue describes events 1969 when “On the morning of October 30, the body of Chase
Andrews lay in the swamp, which would have absorbed it silently, routinely. Hiding it for good.
A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a
sin. But this morning two boys from the village rode their bikes out to the old fire tower and,
from the third switchback, spotted his denim jacket.” The mystery is established. Who is Chase
Andrews? What happened to him? Was he murdered? Was his death a tragedy? All of these
questions are provoked in this sequence, and the effect is to draw the reader into the story.
➢ It is also important to note how the opening introduces thematic concerns that will become
important later in the novel. These themes relate to suffering, to isolation and to justice.

➢ Following the prologue, the narrative flashes back to 1952. The author’s descriptive skill and
control over aesthetic language is evident from the way she crafts the atmosphere of the
setting, a tropical swampland: “The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath
hung the oaks and pines with fog.”
➢ We are then introduced to the protagonist, Kya, a six-year-old girl who lives in poverty in an
isolated shack on the edges of the swamp. Her poverty is evoked through the author’s
attention to little, incidental details like the fact that her mother wore “stubby-nosed shoes
were fake alligator skin”...which were “Her only going-out pair.”
➢ One of the key themes of the novel is introduced at this early stage. The chapter describes
how Kya’s mother leaves her family, and the tension of that moment is captured in a typically
descriptive passage: “Usually, with the confidence of a pup, Kya knew her mother would return
with meat wrapped in greasy brown paper or with a chicken, head dangling down. But she
never wore the gator heels, never took a case.” Here we have one of the most important
issues addressed in the novel – that of abandonment. Why does Ma leave her home and her
children? We learn later in the novel that she is a decent woman, who is the victim of domestic
abuse. Does that reality mitigate the fact that her decision to leave her children with her
drunken abusive husband engenders a powerful feeling of betrayal and abandonment in those
children, and, in particular, in our protagonist, Mya?

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➢ The writer’s ability to write credible dialogue is a notable feature of the Literary Genre of
WCS. This is apparent early in the novel when Mya and her brother Jodie (7 years her senior),
discuss their mother’s departure. Jodie is upset and says “A ma don’t leave her kids. It ain’t
in ’em.” Mya replies, “You told me that fox left her babies” and Jodie responds “Yeah, but that
vixen got ’er leg all tore up.”
➢ This dialogue is simple, and authentic. The use of phonetic spelling and colloquial language
adds to that sense of authenticity. The author’s use of imagery and foreshadowing, two other
important elements of Literary Genre, are also evident, as the fox’s injury and pain causes it
to leave her cubs, and we learn later that the same reasons explain Ma’s desperate decision
to leave her family. There is a beautiful and plaintive moment when Mya’s distress is
communicated through dialogue, onomatopoeia, and simile: “Her throat tight, she whispered,
“But Ma’s carryin’ that blue case like she’s goin’ somewheres big.”
➢ This moment, so early in the novel, sets the tone for the general vision and viewpoint. Ma’s
decision to flee her abusive husband paints a negative picture of intimate relationships, and
the idea of children being helpless in the face of an abusive adult relationship is also
disturbing.

➢ Having introduced the characters and the dramatic scenario, Delia Owens then goes on to
establish the setting of her story. That setting is simultaneously harsh and beautiful. The
history of Barkley Cove and the marsh that surrounds it is captured succinctly: “Those looking
for serious land moved on, and this infamous marsh became a net, scooping up a mishmash
of mutinous sailors, castaways, debtors, and fugitives dodging wars, taxes, or laws that they
didn’t take to.” This is an unforgiving place, a place where dreams are crushed, a place where
it is almost impossible to carve out a living from the land.
➢ We are told “Others squatted on the land more recently, especially after the World Wars, when
men came back broke and broke-up. Just like their whiskey, the marsh dwellers bootlegged
their own laws.” The theme of abandonment is clearly evident here, but on a broader, macro
scale. The Marsh is a place which attracts society’s misfits, those who do not fit in and who
struggle to cope with their outsider identity.
➢ However, it is also a place of beauty, a rich ecosystem thriving with life. The omniscient 3rd
person narrator makes this clear when she says “Maybe it was mean country, but not an inch
was lean. Layers of life—squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl, fish...” This
juxtaposition is deliberate and relevant both to the thematic concerns and general vision and
viewpoint of the novel. Mya is a character the reader learns to admire and appreciate. As we

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journey with her through the narrative, we share her struggles, empathise with her pain and
celebrate her success. However, she is also a very clever killer. When threatened, she is
capable of taking another life and hiding that truth in a cunning, ruthless and methodical way.
This arouses themes of deception, of the complexity of human nature and of identity. This
troubling reality is captured through the symbolism of the marsh.
➢ Later, the author adds scope to the setting by introducing the local town of Barkley Cove. It is
depicted with cinematic clarity, and the writer’s skill as a descriptive writer is evident from
passages like “For the first time ever Kya walked alone toward the village of Barkley Cove to
buy groceries...There were two streets: Main ran along the oceanfront with a row of shops;
the Piggly Wiggly grocery at one end, the Western Auto at the other, the diner in the middle.
Mixed in there were Kress’s Five and Dime, a Penney’s (catalog only), Parker’s Bakery, and a
Buster Brown Shoe Shop.” This is a place which “served its religion hard-boiled and deep-fried.”
The attention to detail here is admirable. These details allow the writer to stimulate the
reader’s imagination, drawing us into this world of North Carolina in the 1950s.

➢ This appears to be a sleepy American idyll. The kind of place longed for by nostalgics who
dream of a return to America’s storied past. However, Delia Owens is no nostalgist. She quickly
adds details which illustrate that this world was a world of bigotry, of exclusion and of cruelty.
The local bar, she notes is called “the Dog-Gone Beer Hall” and it is a place where “No ladies
or children stepped inside because it wasn’t considered proper” and where “Coloreds couldn’t
use the door or the window.” This is a divided place. There are different rules depending on
gender, on ethnicity, and on class. This latter fact is made clear on many occasions in the text:
1) When Miss Pansy Price (in another brilliant example of the writer’s use of both phonetic
spelling and colloquial language) says “You cain’t go blamin’ yo’ sins on somebody else, not
even swamp trash.” Kya is, she says “swamp trash.”
2) When the author notes that the local sheriff, Jackson, “mostly ignored crimes committed in
the swamp. Why interrupt rats killing rats?”
3) When the racial segregation that is a part of daily life is revealed: “Barkley Cove had one school
for whites. First grade through twelfth went to a brick two-story at the opposite end of Main
from the sheriff’s office. The black kids had their own school, a one-story cement block
structure out near Colored Town.”
4) When the kindly Jumpin’ is attacked by two local boys, whose language is both shocking and
indicative of a fundamentally corrupt society: “Ain’t we lucky. Here comes a nigger walkin’ to
Nigger Town.”

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5) The moment when we hear Teresa White talk about Mya: “Meryl Lynn, dahlin’, don’t go near
that girl, ya hear me. She’s dirty.”...“I saw her in time. Thank you, 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.”

Does this depressing example of casual discrimination need to be explained? Surely these are key
moments relevant to the general vision and viewpoint of the text?

➢ One of the most depressing aspects of the novel is the depiction of Pa, Mya’s father.
➢ He is a dissolute, violent bully and his behaviour towards his children shines a light on how
adults can be utterly cruel to children placed under their care. He is introduced when we are
told “Ma didn’t come back that day. No one spoke of it. Least of all Pa. Stinking of fish and
drum likker, he clanked pot lids. “Whar’s supper?” We are told that “After Ma left, over the
next few weeks, Kya’s oldest brother and two sisters drifted away too, as if by example”
because they had “endured Pa’s red-faced rages, which started as shouts, then escalated into
fist-slugs, slugs, or backhanded punches, until one by one, they disappeared.”
➢ This depiction of the disintegration of a family is intensely unsettling. It challenges some of
the fundamental presumptions we have about society, about family bonds, about fatherhood,
about loyalty and about love. However, it also cleverly introduces another important theme,
and that is the issue of resilience and survival. This novel looks at the harsh decisions we
sometimes have to make in order to survive an often harsh and hostile world. It illustrates the
fact that, for people living in circumstances akin to Mya and her family, hard decisions have
to made in order to survive disadvantage.
➢ The harshness of Mya’s childhood is emphasised in the chapters which follow, in which the
child’s suffering is elicited in graphic clarity. She becomes “Impossibly lean, his frame seemed
to flop about from poor gravity. His molars yellow as an old dog’s teeth...for three days Pa
didn’t come and Kya boiled turnip greens from Ma’s garden for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
She’d walked out to the chicken coop for eggs but found it bare. Not a chicken or egg
anywhere.” This a key moment when examining the general vision and viewpoint of the text,
but also when thinking about important themes like abandonment and survival.

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➢ One of the most notable aspects of the Literary Genre of WCS is the writer’s adept
characterisation. A great example is this pen-portrait of Tate Walker’s father, Scupper, “a
large man with mountain shoulders and thick red hair and a beard, threw his hand in the air.”
A more substantial example of this important aspect of literary genre is the description of
Mya’s Pa. He is a brute, of that there is no doubt. However, he is no one-dimensional, cartoon
villain. The author gives us a compelling back story that makes him a substantial, believeable
character. We are told “Pa had fought Germany in the Second World War, where his left femur
caught shrapnel and shattered.” Later, we learn that he is no war hero, and was wounded
while cowering, trying to hide from a battle.
➢ Having abandoned his six-year-old daughter to fend for herself, he returns, sober, and is
depicted as capable of kindness and love. This is captured in an important key moment when
the two go fishing together and Kya caught a fish: “Pa leaned out and snatched it in the net,
then sat back, slapping his knee and yahooing like she’d never seen. She grinned wide and they
looked into each other’s eyes, closing a circuit.”
➢ He seems kind, gifting his daughter a “frayed knapsack, made of canvas tough enough for a
lifetime and covered in small pockets and secret compartments. Heavy-duty zips. She stared
out the window. He had never given her anything.” His is intelligent and “knew the marsh the
way a hawk knows his meadow” (yet another example of this writer’s mastery over simile).
➢ It is at this point in the narrative that Pa’s character is fleshed out through dialogue. He opens
up to Mya, telling her “My folks weren’t always po’, ya know,...They had land, rich land, raised
tobaccy and cott’n and such...Then it all went wrong together. Ah was a young’un through
most of it, so don’t know, but there was the D’pression, cott’n weevils, Ah don’t know what all,
and it was gone. Only thang left was debts, lotsa debts.”
➢ So, he, like Mya, had a really tough childhood. He suffered trauma and, as readers, we learn a
lot about the forces that have forged his hard personality. There is real affection for his
daughter, it seems, and that means the world to this child, who has lived a life devoid of
affection: “She closed her eyes, and then opened them wide. He had called her “hon.”
➢ Later, we learn that his real name is Jackson Clark. We also learn of his courtship with Mya’s
mother and of how he destroyed both of their lives through alcoholism. “He enrolled in night
classes to finish high school but usually skipped out to play poker and, stinking of whiskey,
came home late to his new wife. After only three weeks, the teacher dropped him from the
classes. Maria begged him to stop drinking, to show enthusiasm for his job so that her father
would promote him. But the babies started coming and the drinking never stopped. Between
1934 and 1940 they had four children, and Jake was promoted only once.” While there are

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redeeming features to Pa’s character, overall, he is a dissolute and unpleasant man. His
presence and his selfish nature has brought suffering to the world and he is a thoroughly
depressing depiction of human nature. Delia Owens’ ability to draw such a believeable and
complex character is an important aspect of the literary genre of this novel.

➢ Having established the harsh realities of Mya’s childhood world, the author then flashes
forward in the narrative to 1969. We are introduced to two local boys, Benji Mason and Steve
Long, both ten, both blond, who, on October 30, discover a body. The moment of discovery is
captured with clarity: “Arms pumping, they ran back to the ground and pushed their way to
the other side of the tower’s base, greenish mud clinging to their boots. There lay a man, flat
on his back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee. His eyes and mouth wide
open. “Jesus Christ!” Benji said. “My God, it’s Chase Andrews.”
➢ It is at this point that the author’s ability to draw realistic and believeable characters once
again comes to the fore. Chase Andrews is a key character, around whose behaviour much of
the plot revolves. It is vital that the writer conveys this pivotal character in a realistic fashion,
and that is certainly the case. We are told “They had known Chase since he was born. Had
watched his life ease from charming child to cute teen; star quarterback and town hot shot to
working for his parents. Finally, handsome man wedding the prettiest girl.” This picture of the
All-American boy is then juxtaposed with the ugly reality of how his life ended, “sprawled
alone, less dignified than the slough. Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show.” Here,
Delia Owen’s ability to use symbolism to add a richness to her narrative is again evident.
➢ That image of Chase as the local hero is also challenged when the sheriff observes “Ya know
how Chase was. Tom-cattin’, ruttin’ ’round like a penned bull let out. ’Fore he was married,
after he was married, with single girls, married women. I seen randy dogs at a bitch fest better
behaved.” Again, dialogue, phonetic spelling and colloquial language are employed to
tremendous effect here, and depth is added to this intriguing character.

➢ One of the most important moments in the novel occurs on the day Mya is compelled to go
to school. Owens employs a beautiful simile to describe her trepidation when, as an outsider,
she was forced to enter this alien world and “sat down fast in her seat at the back of the room,
trying to disappear like a bark beetle blending into the furrowed trunk of an oak.” This moment
relates to the themes of isolation and of abandonment that permeate the novel. Mya is from
a family that lives on the edge of society. She is highly intelligent, but the school system is not
set up to cater for her or children like her. She exists on the fringes of this world which has

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abandoned her as ‘swamp trash.’ We are told “Kya never went back to school a day in her life.
She returned to heron watching and shell collecting, where she reckoned she could learn
something. “I can already coo like a dove,” she told herself.”
➢ Kya’s reaction to her school experience defines her and points to the theme of resilience
that is so important in this novel. She is never crushed by her experiences, however difficult.
She knows that “imagination grows in the loneliest of soils” and, in another excellent simile,
we are told that “at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand.
Still there, but deep.” She embraces the world she knows, the world of the swamp, the world
of nature. There, she “laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her
mother.” That mother image is so important here. The swamp provided her with everything
she needs, in a material and in a spiritual sense.

➢ The tranquil time Mya spends with her father does not last long. His brutish behaviour
emerges again, and Mya is again left abandoned. This moment is captured in typically
beautiful imagery: “Those warm days were just a thrown-in season. Low clouds parting, the
sun splashing her world briefly, then closing up dark and tight-fisted again.”

➢ It is at this point that we are introduced to two of the most positive and uplifting characters
in the novel, Jumpin’, the proprietor of a local store, and Mabel, “his good-sized wife, swept
clean as a whistle just like a floor. No snake could slink within thirty yards of the steps without
being spotted by her hoe.” These are kind, decent, charitable people. When Mabel sees Mya,
half-starved and neglected, her reaction is instinctive: “Lawd, we gotta do something ’bout
that child. Ain’t nobody gonna buy them fish; I can cook ’em up in stew...Our church can come
up wif some clothes, other things for her. We’ll tell ’er there’s some family that’ll trade jumpers
for carpies. What size is she?”
➢ Mya survives because of the kindness, understanding and wisdom of these people who, like
her, have been rejected by mainstream society. She is an outcast because of her social
standing. They, because of the colour of their skin.
➢ And Mabel and Jumpin’ are not the only people who show kindness to Kya. Tate Walker,
“the feather boy” also enters her world, and his gift is precious. He teaches the child to read.
➢ As usual, he is carefully described in a detailed pen-portrait: “His golden hair stuck out from
his cap in all manner of curls and loose bits, and his face was tan, pleasing. He was calm, smiled
wide, his whole face beaming. But it was his eyes that caught her up; they were golden brown
with flecks of green, and fixed on hers the way heron eyes catch a minnow.”

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➢ Tate is an extremely positive depiction of human nature. He represents the first time Mya
has known real, sustained, unselfish kindness in her life. She grows to love him, and therefore,
becomes emotionally vulnerable. When Tate “didn’t return for the reading lessons. Before
the feather game, loneliness had become a natural appendage to Kya, like an arm. Now it
grew roots inside her and pressed against her chest.” This relationship becomes formative and
plays an important role in the subsequent plot developments.
➢ Learning how to read transforms Mya’s world. There are beautiful moments of freedom,
such as when, “at last Kya could label all her precious specimens. She took each feather, insect,
shell, or flower, looked up how to spell the name in Ma’s books, and wrote it carefully on her
brown-paper-bag painting.”
➢ Later, looking through her mother’s papers, she finds her parents’ names, Mister Jackson
Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, and we are told it was “not until that
moment had she known her parents’ proper names.”
➢ Mya begins to form a sense of her identity as she learns about her parents lives and
background. Her mother’s family were “descendants of a French merchant, owners of a shoe
factory.” She learns how her father moved his family to North Carolina against her mother’s
wishes and how, “now and then, when sober, Jake dreamed again of completing school,
making a better life for them all, but the shadow of the foxhole would move across his mind.
Once sure and cocky, handsome and fit, he could no longer wear the man he had become and
he’d take a swig from his poke. Blending in with the fighting, drinking, cussing renegades of
the marsh was the easiest thing Jake ever did.”

➢ WCS is often a depressing depiction of human experience. There is duplicity, cruelty, bigotry
and a lot of suffering. However, there is also light. No-where is that light more evident than
in the depiction of the love that develops between Mya and Tate. There is a beautiful passage
which describes their first kiss: “For the rest of the summer Kya and Tate did the reading
lessons at the tumbledown cabin... Then, as she whirled around, she bumped into Tate, who
had stood, and they froze, staring into each other’s eyes. They stopped laughing. He took her
shoulders, hesitated an instant, then kissed her lips, as the leaves rained and danced around
them as silently as snow.”
➢ Tate is a good man, and his motives are decent. It is his gift to her, “ten jars of oil paint, tins
of watercolors, and different-sized brushes” that makes her later success as an author and
chronicler of wildlife possible. His nobility is evident when he tells his father “She’s more pure
and innocent than any of those girls you’d have me go to the dance with. Oh man, some of the

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girls in this town, well, let’s just say they hunt in packs, take no prisoners. And yes, I’ve been
going out to see Kya some. You know why? I’m teaching her how to read because people in
this town are so mean to her she couldn’t even go to school.”
➢ However, the happiness they share does not, cannot last. Tate has a life to lead, and when the
time comes for him to go to college, he has to tell her “Kya, I’ve come to say good-bye.” Her
sense of abandonment returns again. She is crushed by this experience. She had learned to
cope on her own, but then, slowly learned to share her life, allowed herself to become
attached, to become vulnerable. Her struggle to cope with the impact of Tate leaving is
difficult to read:
“For a month after July 4th, Kya did not leave her place, did not go into the marsh or to Jumpin’s
for gas or supplies. She lived on dried fish, mussels, oysters. Grits and greens. When all her
shelves were empty, she finally motored to Jumpin’s for supplies but didn’t chat with him as
usual. Did her business and left him standing, staring after her. Needing people ended in hurt.”

➢ And then, at this moment of vulnerability, she meets the predatory Chase Andrews who, we
are told, had “come here to snag her, to be the first.” He really is a deeply unpleasant depiction
of humanity. He is spoilt, childish, violent, hypocritical, and manipulative.
➢ Owens’ depiction of him is particularly clever, as she shows his being charming to Mya, and
then juxtaposes that with the reality of how he sees her, as conveyed to his friends in
comments like “Yeah, she’s wild as a she-fox in a snare. Just what you’d expect from a marsh
minx. Worth every bit a’ the gas money.” Mya never falls for Chase; she is too intelligent and
too aware of his nature. However, she is lonely, and she is heartbroken, and she has an affair
with him. That quickly ends, however, when she learns that he has become engaged to
another girl.

➢ It is at this point that Tate returns from college and tries to rekindle his relationship with Mya.
She is hostile to him, but takes his advice and help and succeeds in having a book of her
drawings, “The Sea Shells of the Eastern Seaboard, by Catherine Danielle Clark”, published.
This is a significant key moment when considering the general vision and viewpoint of the
novel. This young girl from an abusive home was abandoned by her family and by her society.
However, a combination of her intelligence, her ingenuity and the patient kindness of
another human being means that she can overcome these disadvantages and make a
meaningful and lasting contribution to the world. Surely that is relevant to the theme of
resilience as well as to the general vision and viewpoint of the novel.

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➢ Kya’s book is a success. For the first time she has money. She is still haunted by her childhood
and “continued sleeping on the porch, except in the coldest of winter. But now she had a bed.”
A visit from her brother Jodie fills in some of the gaps of her story, and we learn that her
mother died of leukaemia. When the swamp is threatened by developers, she has the money
and the wit to obtain “a full deed in her name for three hundred ten acres of lush lagoons,
sparkling marsh, oak forests, and a long private beach on the North Carolina coastline.”
➢ There is almost a happy ending. She is a success and is able to go to Mabel and Jumpin’ and
say “I’m okay now, Jumpin’. Thank you, and thank Mabel for all you did for me.”

➢ And then comes the ending of the novel in which the mystery that was established at the
outset is solved. We learn that Chase, rejected by Kya, tried to rape her. We learn that he
habitually wore a shell necklace she had given him, but that it was not on his body when he
was found. Mya is arrested for murder and put on trial. She is defended by Tom Milton. There
is a trial. Witnesses are called on Mya’s behalf, her alibi is corroborated, and the verdict is
read out: “We the jury find Miss Catherine Danielle Clark not guilty as charged in the first-
degree murder of Mr. Chase Andrews.”
➢ Kya and Tate are reconciled and Owens’ gift for dialogue is again evident in this tender
moment: “I love you, Kya, you know that. You’ve known it for a long time.” “You left me like
all the others,” she said. “I will never leave you again.” “I know,” she said. “Kya, do you love
me? You’ve never spoken those words to me.” “I’ve always loved you. Even as a child—in a
time I don’t remember—I already loved you.”
➢ Kya is given a happy ending. She settles down to love with Tate on the swamp and we are
told “though Kya was never completely healed from the scorn and suspicion surrounding her,
a soft contentment, a near-happiness settled into her.” When she dies after a long and loving
life, Tate “got special permission for her to be buried on her land under an oak overlooking the
sea, and the whole town came out for the funeral.”
➢ And then, the defining plot twist. Tate finds “laid out carefully on cotton...the shell necklace
Chase had worn until the night he died” and the implication is clear. Mya had done what she
needed to do to survive. She killed Chase Andrews and the novel ends with all of the strands
of the narrative neatly and satisfactorily resolved.

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