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Chapter 44
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
One night, when Minnie is buried in a magazine, Sephy asks what they’re going to do about Mother’s drinking. It’s getting worse. Minnie repeats what Mother says: that drinking “smooth[s] out the rough edges.” Sephy isn’t convinced. Mother has been home for a while now, and she’s overbearingly affectionate—but she’s also drinking more than ever and wearing strong perfume to cover it up. Sephy knows Mother is getting sadder and lonelier, and there’s nothing Sephy can do to help.
Sephy wants everything to be fixed—which to her means getting Mother to stop drinking. Minnie, though, takes a different view and supports Mother’s drinking, though her response doesn’t seem to get at the whole reason Mother is drinking. Indeed, at this point, Sephy seems more aware than Minnie that Mother is struggling emotionally and feels isolated. But Sephy can’t connect with Mother or with Minnie, further distancing the family members from one another.
Themes
