by Joseph Back

Recently playing at the Stanley Theater, ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ is a tale both natural, dramatic, and mysterious, with a couple twists and turns before it’s over. On that note, do you know the proper distinction between ‘innocent’ and ‘not guilty’ in a court of law?

If you’re not sure, then ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ might interest you. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and violence, it tells the story of abused and abandoned “Marsh Girl” Catherine Danielle Clark and nearby Barkley Cove, a girl and a town equally damaged by nature and nurture, if in different ways.

First things first though: Crawdads are also known as cray – fish, and don't sing. The tie-in with the main lead named Kya refers to creatures in shells,. which can often be forgotten.

That being said, the core of the story is retained in the two hour five minute long drama, which revolves around the mur der of Chase Andrews and who—if anyone—killed him.

Opening on October 30, 1969 with the discovery of Chase's body, we learn the first of many distinctions: swamp and marsh.

“Marsh is not swamp,” the narrator relates. “Marsh is a space of light grass floating on water," But "then within the swamp, here and there, true swamp.” The latter is where Chase Andrews is found, at the bottom of an abandoned fire tower. The evidence points to him falling through an open grate at the top, but without footprints around him (his or others) to indicate presence. This in itself is no proof of an accident— the tidal cycle would have erased any footprints after he fell, it later comes out in court. Knowing why authors choose specif ic character names is somewhat like asking parents why they chose to name their children like they did, but that being said a few observations, are still in order.

The first is the name of the lead character and protagonist Catherine Danielle Clark, the first name meaning "Pure," the second “God is my judge,” taken literally and in its various parts. The name she goes by in much of the movie, mean- while, is Kya, which aside from meaning of "diamond in the sky” is also a geological term that means “thousands of years ago.”

The second naming observation to make is that of Chase Andrews, whose name taken literally means “Chase (the) man,” but might also be rendered as “chasing manhood” or else “chasing strength,” something he does imperfectly and even criminally, leading to strong reason for Kya to fear him. A former quarterback with family expectations he can’t quite live up to, Chase uses alcohol to escape, which in turn drives him to do things that harm others.

The third and final character naming observation to make is that of Tate, a boy whose name means “pleasant, radiant, bright." Tate defends Kya from her father as a young girl and also teaches her to read after her father abandons her, Tate later becoming her only true love.

Over the course of the film Kya is a naturalist who takes to drawing marsh wildlife, but is also the product of an abusive home and family abandonment from a young age, learning to live on her own by digging mussels, shunned and ostracized by polite society in Barkley Cove.

Chase, meanwhile, calls Kya "the Marsh Girl," but also wears a necklace she gave him even as he marries a girl named Pearl, due to family expectations, he implies. The necklace, missing from his dead body under the abandoned fire tower, becomes a crucial missing link in unraveling the mystery of just who might have killed him.

At the same time, Tate’s human failure to keep a prom- ise of returning to visit from college ultimately drives Kya to open herself to Chase Andrews five years later, with disas trous results. Chase looks a bit like Tate but with brown hair instead of blonde, as one distinction. Tate is protective of Kya, while Chase is exploitative, in various ways.

While Chase alone is responsible for his actions that make Kya fear him-including trashing her home and an attempt ed rape—the town is at least partially responsible for shaping Chase's attitudes, and thus can't convict her of first-degree murder without implicating itself as partial accessory. Kya has been the town’s scapegoat since her youth, with few friends and only two or three kind adults who recognize her struggles and do what they can to help.

“People are going to judge you whether they know you or not,” volunteer defense lawyer Tom Milton tells Clark in her jail cell.

"They're judging themselves," Kya says of the verdict as she tells pro-bono attorney Tom Milton she won’t take the stand to defend herself in a case she might get the death penalty in.

Kya likely isn't innocent (as we find out), but she is none theless ‘not guilty,’ meaning that the standard of evidence for conviction in a court of law, just isn’t there. The application of what might be called pre-emptive self defense from Kya's point of view is morally problematic if drawn to its logical conclusion, but is in line with the writer’s naturalistic premise, in which “there is no morality in nature.” But if there is no morality in nature, it leaves an unanswered question: how did humans obtain this trait of morality, if purely material creatures?