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Chapter 32
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Noughts and Crosses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism, Division, and Tragedy
Awareness and Privilege
Love, Lust, Power, and Violence
Friendship
Youth, Innocence, and Growing Up
Family
Summary
Analysis
Sephy hesitantly enters Minnie’s room and asks if Mother and Mr. Hadley might actually get a divorce this time, since Mother was the one to suggest it. Minnie just shrugs. When Sephy asks about their brother, Minnie says he’s just their dad’s son—she’s known about him for years. Their dad had a fling before he met Mother. Sephy is shocked that she and Minnie see the situation so differently. She says she’s going to ask Dad about their brother, but Minnie forbids Sephy from doing so—it’ll make Mother even more miserable.
Now that Sephy knows there’s more to her parents and their marriage than she thought, she wants to find out as much as possible about them and about her half-brother. Sephy seems to find the idea of a brother intriguing—he’d be another person to perhaps support her—but Minnie sees him as nothing more than an annoying interloper. Sephy wants to connect with her family (which is why she approaches Minnie about this at all), but Minnie isn’t at all receptive.
Themes
Sephy asks why Mother is so unhappy. Minnie says Mr. Hadley’s son is part of it, but Mother also had an affair, probably just to attract her husband’s attention. And she also has no friends. Sephy says Mother has lots of friends, but Minnie insists none of them are real friends. Sephy sniffs that if Mother treats her friends the way she treats Sephy, she can see why—but Minnie says Mother is lonely. When Sephy asks why Mother can’t go make more friends, Minnie observes that Sephy is very young. Minnie says her wish for Sephy is that she never gets older.
Minnie might not be eager to connect with her sister or her parents, but she’s also very protective of Mother—and very astute when it comes to parsing why Mother is so unhappy. She realizes too that Sephy isn’t old enough to realize that Mother is somewhat trapped in her marriage. Her reputation precedes her; it’s not like she gets to start fresh with potential new friends.
Themes
