88 pages • 2 hours read
Elizabeth WeinCode Name Verity
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Friendship
Friendship, particularly the friendship between Maddie and Julie, forms a significant theme of this novel. Their friendship and the positive effects it has on both women’s lives, rather than the grim reality of the war, comprises the heart of this novel.
Without the war, both women realize that they probably would not have met. Without the war, Maddie would never have had the opportunities to fly and challenge herself, and Julie would have led a more conventional life than her life as a spy and interrogator. Despite the terrors and hardship of war, both women appreciate the gift of friendship that it has brought them.
A specific gift of their friendship derives from their ability to work well together. As Maddie and Julie both say at different points, “[W]e make a sensational team” (68). Both women do more when they are together or work together than they can accomplish as individuals. As their friendship progresses, they give each other the confidence to do more than they thought they could. The power of their friendship and accomplishments begin when they safely talk down a German pilot, and continues when they shoot down a German fighter plane.
From these dramatic and sensational beginnings, their friendship blossoms and grows. Both women admire qualities and abilities in the other that they themselves lack. Maddie admires Julie’s acting ability and her ability to remain calm under pressure. Julie teaches Maddie to be able to function through her fear. Maddie teaches Julie to appreciate just how good of an actress she is, planting the idea that Julie would be a great spy. Through their trust and love for one another, Julie ends up trusting Maddie to help her when she needs her most. Maddie, through her love for Julie, ends up being able to do what her friend asks her to—end her life—even though it breaks her heart.
Through the depiction of Julie and Maddie’s relationship, Wein indicates that friendship helps each of us transcend the limitations of who we thought we were, making us all into better and stronger people.
Valor
One of the primary lessons of this novel is that true valor is found in conquering your fear, not in the absence of fear. For example, Maddie uses the refrain, “FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE” (108) when she must remind herself to fight her fear by focusing on the job at hand. She learns from Julie that if you do what you’ve got to do, then your fear won’t matter.
Both Julie and Maddie must confront their worst fears, indeed the worst of all fears—death—during the course of their war work. The war does not allow anyone to sit back and avoid the conflict—everyone must work together to ensure victory. Without victory, there will be no survival. Maddie and Julie understand this, and they are willing to put their lives on the line. In addition, their friendship, personalities, and talents enable them to work very well together as a team.
However, Julie’s bravery stands apart, as she endures the torture of the Nazis, the hatred of her fellow prisoners who believe she is a collaborator, and the terrible loneliness of knowing that she is marked for certain death. She bears the burden of turning Anna Engel to her side and of attempting to buy as much time as she can with von Linden. She tells the story of her friendship with Maddie as a way to keep her sanity and remind herself of the good in the world.
In turn, when Maddie faces the most difficult decision in the novel, she does not hesitate to do what needs to be done. It takes tremendous courage to perform such an act.
Many of the characters, including Georgia Penn, the entire Thibaut family, and Jamie Beaufort-Stuart, display valor in one form or another.
The Nature of Truth
The concept of truth and lies are central components of this narrative. The complexity of Julie’s deception does not become clear until the second half of the novel, where Maddie reveals that Julie hasn’t told the Nazis anything of value.
At that point, the novel turns on its head. Julie’s brilliance is further demonstrated when Maddie tells us that she has both lied like a champ about the British war effort and told the essential truth of the story of Maddie and Julie’s friendship. The duality of Julie’s story is stunning. The parts that are emotionally true provide cover for the parts that are factually lies—all of the details about the airfields and airplanes. Even the factual truth—how Julie and Maddie met and formed their friendship—assists in the mental sleight-of-hand Julie pulls off in not giving the Nazis any useful war information.
The significance and importance of emotional truth takes center stage when Julie’s narrative is revealed to be essentially false. The reader realizes that Julie writes the story for herself, to get the essential moral truth of her life straight in her own mind, rather than for von Linden or anyone else.
Women’s Roles in World War II
Also highlighted in this novel is the heroism of women and their contributions to the war effort. Wein chooses two types of war work commonly taken on by women, piloting and spying, and uses the historical record to support her fictional story.
This novel depicts women standing shoulder to shoulder with men, as equals, as exemplified when Jamie and Maddie perform the same tasks in the war effort. Furthermore, Jamie implicitly acknowledges their equality by asking Maddie to fly them home from France. This equality of risk and effort demonstrates the many ways in which the war could not have been won without women.
Maddie and other women’s contributions through the ATA freed up all able-bodied male pilots and navigators for vital combat missions, while the equally vital roles of flying planes to and from repair, and ferrying secret passengers, fell to women pilots and invalided male pilots, such as Jamie Beaufort-Stuart.
The role of women in secret work appears in the historical record of the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. Women, including radio operators, formed a secret army supporting the war effort, including the incredibly dangerous work behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Europe. About a quarter of the people who worked in the SOE were women.
Just as the war broke down the barriers separating the social classes, the war broke down barriers preventing women from pursuing a larger role in society. Through the necessities of war, women took on the same risks, many giving their lives, as their male colleagues.
