“This place is like the whole world and the whole world is like this place. So where could I go?”
From the beginning of the novel, Callum is aware that his perspective is quite different from Sephy's. A few lines after this, he'll say to her that she's on the inside—he's not. The problem expressed in this quote plagues Callum throughout the story. Even if he leaves, where will he go? Even if he gets an education, what can he do? He can't escape the situation he was born into. The mirrored layout of this dialogue—this place is the world, and the world is this place—communicates how trapped he is and how few options he has.
Be truthful. What I did in the food hall wasn’t for Sephy’s own good or even my own. It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small. Scared of being with Sephy, scared of being away from her. No jokes, no prevarications, no sarcasm, no lies. Just scared scared scared.
In this quote, Callum communicates his fear by telling us directly and by using rhetorical devices. The fragments and parallelism of his thought process give a sense that he's going back and forth. This quote also provides a harsh contrast to Callum's mindset after the two-and-a-half-year time skip. Here, he forces himself to be truthful with himself; later, he will lie to himself, using hatred as a shield to avoid how he really thinks and feels about what he's doing.
I’d been ashamed of them. And myself. I’d felt ashamed of myself a lot recently, and, if I’m honest, part of me resented Callum for it. I didn’t want to feel guilty for just being, but that’s how he was beginning to make me feel.
In this quote, Sephy explains the internal conflict she feels as she learns more about the social dynamics between noughts and Crosses. She's ashamed of other Crosses' behavior, and of herself—but this shame also makes her angry at Callum, because she personally doesn't see how she's done anything wrong. At this point in the narrative, she feels she's "just being," and she blames Callum for how she feels as she learns about inequality. This blame is, of course, misplaced; as she learns more and becomes more active in pursuing social equality, Sephy will learn to direct the guilt she feels into action.
Dad turned to beckon to me. Slowly, I walked over to him, knowing that he was going to hug me too. I wasn’t wrong either. I wanted to be hugged by him. I didn’t want to let him go because I was so scared. He hadn’t done anything. Why was he still being held?
Callum is finally allowed to see his father, Ryan, after the McGregor family's house is tear-gassed and the McGregors are arrested and interrogated with no explanation. Callum's short sentences make him seem conflicted, putting "I wanted" and "I didn't want" next to each other, emphasizing his strong emotions and his fear. Ending on an unanswered question forces the reader to wonder: why is Ryan being held? Why were the McGregors taken and questioned so brutally? While Callum might not understand why his father is being held, the reader knows that this treatment by the police would never have happened to Crosses.
I smiled—and carried on walking… I wasn’t part of the whole Cross way of life. Why should I do what any of them said? Only when I heard Mr Costa slam back into his office did I slow down. My throat had swollen up from the inside out. I was being gutted like a fish wriggling for its life on a slab. I was out of Heathcrofts.
And I was never coming back.
Callum's decision to leave Heathcroft High School follows the headmaster, Mr. Costa, asking him to leave until Ryan's trial is over. Callum sees this for what it is—just another excuse to kick the noughts out of school—and elects to leave on his own. However, once Mr. Costa closes his door, the weight of Callum's decision hits him. Placing "And I was never coming back" on its own line emphasizes its finality, as well as its importance. Callum uses a simile to describe how he's feeling, comparing himself to a helpless fish out of water already being gutted.
I swallowed hard. I’d sworn on the Good Book not to lie. But the judge and the jury wouldn’t understand the truth. The truth was more than just a spoken sentence. It was a combination of the thoughts and feelings and the history behind them. Was I making excuses? Dressing them up in reasons and justifications and deliberate evasions? Seven people died. No reasoning in the world would ever change that fact, or excuse it.
Sephy is conflicted when she's asked to testify in Ryan McGregor's criminal trial. Her musing on the truth in this quote echoes the theme of responsibility in the novel, as she realizes that simply answering the questions the prosecutor, Pingule, asks won't convey the whole truth of Callum's (and Ryan's) innocence. She still isn't sure what her responsibility is, though, and as she asks more questions she can't answer, she finds herself more conflicted.
“Love doesn’t exist. Friendship doesn’t exist—not between a nought and a Cross. There’s no such thing.”
After Ryan's hanging is interrupted, Callum climbs through Sephy's window to confront her. Here he expresses his anger by lying—as the novel shows, the love between Callum and Sephy transcends racial boundaries, and other noughts and Crosses can be friends (like Jasmine and Meggie). And just a few paragraphs later, he and Sephy will kiss and spend the night together. His rage here is an example of the misplaced anger that can be seen throughout the novel from both Callum and Sephy. These frequent angry untruths force the reader to interrogate what characters actually mean and why they lash out the way they do.
I felt quite upbeat about what was going to happen actually. I was going to join the Liberation Militia. It wasn’t what I’d planned for myself a couple of years ago, but at least I’d stopped drifting. At last, I belonged.
Callum's recruitment to the L.M. finally gives him a sense of belonging. His use of the word "upbeat" gives a sense of rhythm, confirming that he's no longer drifting—he's got a plan now. In this quote, one can see Callum fall softly into the radical violence that appealed to Jude—Callum's tale shows that you don't need to be a criminal to become a terrorist against a regime that doesn't serve you; you just need to have the right combination of disenfranchisement, abuse, and neglect to cause drifting.
I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it’s not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself? And it wasn’t even that most Crosses were prejudiced against noughts. I still don’t believe that. But everyone seemed to be too afraid to stand up in public and say “this is wrong.” And, by everyone, I meant me included. No one wanted to raise their head above the parapet.
This quote provides contrast to Sephy's understanding at the beginning of the novel, before the time skip. Her metaphor of the parapet illustrates the stability of privilege, literally comparing it to a barricade. Sephy has grown into a more mature thinker who's able to feel ashamed of Crosses and herself, and begin to negotiate routes of potential change. She is part of a group of young Crosses who are attempting to change the system from within the system, organizing rallies and sit-ins for racial equality. Whether this is effective is unclear in Noughts & Crosses; further books in the series will explore forms of protest more fully.
They lead me down the long corridor. I’ve never been this way before. Early evening sunlight streams in through the high windows and dances across the floor all around me. It’s so bright I can see the dust motes swirling through the air. Who would’ve thought that dust could look so eerily beautiful. I try to walk as slowly as possible, to drink in every sight and sound. To make each moment last a lifetime.
In the last moments of his life, Callum is led from his cell to the noose where he will be publicly hanged. Unlike almost all of the book, this section is written in the present tense, communicating the sense of urgency in these final seconds, drawing the reader into the immediacy of the scene. Callum appreciates things he's never noticed before, using personification ("dances across the floor") the same way he admired clouds slow-dancing across the sky at the beginning of the novel. His attempt to "drink in every sight and sound" is impossible both literally and rhetorically. Literally, he simply can't witness every sight and sound happening around him. On a rhetorical level, the words themselves convey that impossibility—it's impossible to drink a sight or a sound. Though Callum tries to stay hopeful and appreciate every second, he knows he is about to die.
