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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Crow Country, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Prejudice and Discrimination
Heritage and Land
Justice and Restitution
Violence and Integrity
Summary
Analysis
Sadie, Ellie, David, and Walter leave the pub after the meal and return to Ellie and Sadie’s place. As Walter and Sadie sit watching television, they hear David and Ellie arguing in the kitchen. After David and Walter leave, Ellie, distraught over the fight with David, tells her daughter that she needs to tell her about the past. Sadie is suddenly nervous, wondering if her mother means the past of the 1930s, which she has visited.
The hostile experience that Sadie, her mother, David and Walter faced in the pub clearly leads to tensions between Ellie and David, who are now dating. This recalls the fact that, when Ellie had dated David as a young woman, the couple had also faced complications because of their mixed-race relationship. The experience in the pub suggests that the attitude of the townspeople hasn’t changed much since David and Ellie’s youth.
Themes
But Ellie speaks of a more recent past: she tells Sadie that she used to date Craig Mortlock, when she was in her late teens. Craig had been serious about Ellie, but then Ellie met David and knew she couldn’t marry Craig. In response, Craig retaliated against David. One day, David went to Lake Invergarry to fish with a friend. There, Craig and his gang beat David up and almost killed him. Ellie says that after that, she ran away from Boort. She feels guilty about letting David down. Sadie suggests that she should fix things with David, and Ellie gets up to call him on the phone.
Craig’s violent attack on David when they were young is partly motivated by jealousy over Ellie’s rejection, but it is also motivated by prejudice towards David as an Aboriginal man. The extreme violence of the attack suggests that Craig felt a certain impunity in attacking David, because David is Aboriginal. By dating a white woman who was also Craig’s ex, David, as an Aboriginal man, had challenged taboos, and Craig had clearly felt entitled to punish him severely for it.
Themes
