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Chapter 4
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
One evening, Ellie tells Sadie she can’t be bothered to cook, and so they head down to the pub for dinner. At the pub, they run into Craig Mortlock. Ellie encourages Sadie to go to the backroom and join the kids from school who are there. When she does so, Sadie sees Lachie Mortlock, along with some of the older kids from school, playing billiards. Sadie gets drawn into a game and impresses the boys. Lachie approaches her and chats with her, but then Ellie calls Sadie for dinner.
Sadie’s ability to impress the teenagers with her pool-playing skills, as well her conversation with Lachie, suggests that she is beginning to find her feet in Boort. Her social relationships are expanding. These relationships that Sadie begins to establish indicate that a sense of connection to a place, a location or a landscape, depends to a large degree on the relationships that one builds there.
Themes
Over dinner, Ellie talks about the Mortlocks, remembering the times when they would go together to Lake Invergarry. Sadie confesses that she visited that very lake the other day, and notes that it’s all dried up now. Sadie also tells her mother about the stone circle that she found there, and asks if her mother wants to have a look. Her mother says no, because the lake gives her the creeps. Even though her mother tells her to keep away from the lake, Sadie knows that she must go back to ascertain whether the crows had actually spoken to her there, or whether she had dreamed it all up.
That Sadie chooses not to disclose everything to her mother about what she saw and heard at the lake—particularly the speaking crows—indicates that she doesn’t quite trust her mother. This points back to the tensions that exist between Ellie and Sadie. However, Sadie’s confidence in her own perception of reality is shaken, as she feels the need to return to the lake to confirm whether her encounter with the speaking crows was real or imagined and to better understand how the landscape around her really works.
Themes
