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Chapter 6
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
Sarah Louise runs in the darkness. Soon, she spots some faint lights in the distance, which, as she approaches, she recognizes as lamplights. She realizes that she is dressed differently than she was a few moments before—now she wears a blue cardigan, and is carrying a basket of eggs. It dawns on her that she has become a different person. While this astonishes her, it does not alarm her, and she makes her way to her house.
Sadie’s reality seems to be altering. Suddenly she realizes that she is wearing different clothes—and is in fact a different person, though she herself doesn’t yet know that she has turned into her great-aunt, Sarah Louise, who was also nicknamed “Sadie.” Sadie is therefore both herself and someone else.
Themes
Sarah Louise lets herself into a busy kitchen, where Mum is cooking and John is poring over his schoolbook. Her mother instructs her to mash the potatoes, so she can go look in on the baby. Sarah Louise—who is nicknamed Sadie—busies herself with chores about the kitchen, all the while feeling that her thoughts are not her own. Mum reappears with a baby, and calls Betty and Clarry. It dawns on Sadie that Clarry is her father.
The appearance of new people whom Sadie nonetheless seems to be familiar with—Mum, John and Clarry—and who are clearly familiar with her, indicates that she has entered into a life of another person. She is, in fact, now another “Sadie”—her great-aunt Sarah Louise, who was also known as Sadie.
Themes
As Sarah Louise clears the table for dinner, she picks up a newspaper. There is a headline about Hitler, and the date on the paper is Friday, June 23, 1933. Suddenly Sadie feels faint, realizing that she has time-traveled to the past. Mum instructs her to sit down, and Sadie sits besides the girl Betty who has just appeared.
Dad, or Clarry, appears in the room, and the family all sits down. His presence has a calming effect on the children, including Sarah Louise. They all joke about Sadie’s undercooked peas, which she boiled earlier.
While Sadie is shocked to realize she has time-traveled to the past, the scene that unfolds around her—a family dinner—is very conventional. Clearly the rest of the family members have no sense that Sarah Louise is now not only herself, but also another person—Sadie Hazzard from the future.
Themes
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After dinner, Sarah Louise sits in a chair by the stove. Her mother Jean goes upstairs to put the younger children to bed. Sadie listens to Clarry and John wash up and speak about cricket, and then she drifts off to sleep. In a dream, she finds herself in a dark night, where there is fire and dancing and singing. She sees a black-beaked figure emerging out of the night, its cry ringing out.
The fire that Sadie sees in her dream alludes to a time before electricity when people lived by the light of campfires. The black-beaked figure, of course, recalls the crows. As such, the dream seems to allude to the Aboriginal past, which seems to be closely linked with the crows and perhaps with Sadie’s present.
Themes
