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Note to Amadeus von Linden from Nikolaus Ferber
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Code Name Verity, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
War, Women, and Gender Roles
The Horrors of War
Resistance and Courage
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
Maddie has Julie’s identity papers. What will Julie do without hers? Julie must have Maddie’s. Maddie shouldn’t even be writing all this down in her pilot’s notebook, but she has nothing else to do for now. It’s been two days since she arrived in France, and Maddie just discovered Julie’s forged papers (her identity these days is Katharina Habicht). For Maddie, it doesn’t really matter, since she’s not supposed to be in France anyway. At least this pen is nice. Maddie will distract herself by writing her accident report.
Initially, it’s unclear exactly when Maddie is writing, and how her timeline lines up with Julie’s story. What shines through here is that Maddie is frightened and confused, and that she’s made it to France. It’s also interesting that according to Maddie, Julie is going by Katharina Habicht these days—Julie never mentioned that name in her account. This begs the question of what else Julie left out.
Themes
Maddie writes that she crash-landed near Ormaie on October 11, 1943, in a Lysander. She couldn’t descend, due to the broken tailplane adjustment cable, and made Julie parachute out. Finally, Maddie got the plane down—tail first, which snapped the tail off. It knocked her out. She came to as three men pulled her out. One English SOE agent, Paul, said she must be Verity, but Maddie said she wasn’t. They pulled guns on her, and she sobbed that she was Kittyhawk. With coaxing, Maddie explained that she was shot at over Angers. The men were shocked—now, Maddie realizes this is because she managed to successfully land the damaged plane with its 500 pounds of explosives. They’ve been nice to her since. But the only reason Maddie survived anything is because she was trying to save Julie’s life.
Finally, Maddie reveals that she’s writing this before Julie started writing her account (Julie began writing in November). Maddie’s accident report is about the landing that Julie missed out on, since she jumped out of the plane. Clearly, since Maddie is writing this after making it successfully to the ground, she survived—so whatever photos Julie saw of the crash site were not accurate. The revelation that Julie’s code name is Verity helps explain why Julie reacted so oddly when Georgia Penn used the words “verity” and “verité”—and it hints that Penn is a double agent. Finally, Maddie confirms that her friendship with Julie motivates her to protect Julie.
Themes
Back in the accident report, Paul commented that they had to destroy the plane. Maddie shouldn’t be writing this part, but the Resistance had shot a German sentry not long before she landed, and they had to do something with the body. The Lysander was a gift: they dressed the sentry in Maddie’s clothes, tucked him into the plane with all Maddie’s things—even her boots—and blew the thing up. They got out all the explosives first and then filled the plane with other stuff they wanted to get rid of, including 11 wireless sets. Mitraillette, a girl in the Resistance whose father’s farm Maddie is on now, laughed about the 11 radios. The English would never send 11 radios at once; it’ll be a mystery for the Germans.
Maddie is well aware that she should be keeping a lot of what she writes secret. But she suggests that for her own mental health, she has to get what happened onto paper—writing is, for her, a way to process the trauma. Losing her boots is a huge loss, since they helped Maddie feel like she fit in with the other male pilots. This passage also reveals that the 11 radios that Julie gave code to the Nazis for were planted—again, this indicates that readers should not take Julie’s account at face value.
Themes
It took an hour to get the Lysander ready to burn, and then the Resistance fighters stashed Maddie in a hidden loft in the barn. The family hiding her is being extremely generous, as Maddie is a huge liability. Maddie is particularly afraid because she’s not just English—she’s also Jewish. She’ll try not to think about it.
Earlier in the book, Julie recounted how excited she and Maddie were to go to France. But just like Julie, Maddie is living in a sort of nightmare now that she’s in France—she’s not captured, but she realizes she’ll be in a lot of danger if anyone realizes she’s Jewish.
Themes
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Maddie spent her first day sleeping while German soldiers stomped around the farm where Maddie is hiding and took photos of the Lysander. Getting to rest is amazing; she’s sore from fighting with the plane. She’s falling asleep even now. She hopes that nobody finds her notes and that Julie will show up.
Maddie is staying with a family that’s safe, so she has the luxury of being able to sleep and recover after fighting with the broken Lysander. Already, her experience in France differs greatly from Julie’s, because Maddie is safe and can trust her protectors.
Themes
