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What happened to Kya’s father?
Once Ma leaves, the rest of Kya’s family follows suit, mostly due to needing to escape Pa’s abuse, as well as wanting to seek a better life elsewhere. After Jodie leaves, Pa and Kya are left alone with each other. Pa seems to understand to some extent that his alcoholism and abusive nature are responsible for driving his family away, and for a time, he stops drinking. During that time, he becomes a better father to Kya, teaching her to boat and fish. But a mysterious letter from Kya’s mother catapults him back into his alcoholic tendencies, and he starts to abuse Kya again and go out on long benders. Eventually, he simply doesn’t return home. It’s unclear if he’s consciously split town and abandoned Kya or if his drunken escapades eventually ended in his death. Kya never discovers the reason behind his disappearance, and he’s never seen again.
Why did Kya’s mother leave their family?
Kya’s mother is a loving and caring woman, but the severe abuse she suffers at the hands of her husband turns her into a shell of her former self. Physically beaten and emotionally broken, she’s mentally unable to provide her children with the care they need, and leaving that situation is the only way for her to survive. Kya compares their mother’s actions to those of a mother fox, who, injured and in danger of starvation, leaves her offspring to die to save herself. While Kya forgives her mother for leaving, she can’t forgive her for not coming back once she healed. It’s later revealed that Kya’s mother did attempt to gain custody of the children, but she was cowed by her husband into submission and lived the rest of her life suffering from depression and guilt.
Why did Tate leave Kya?
While Tate does genuinely love Kya, continuing a romantic relationship with her would mean giving up a lot of the opportunities he’s been afforded, including pursuing academic and professional opportunities outside of his hometown. For a small-town, working-class boy, these chances are life-changing, and too good to pass up. Kya is uneducated, unsocialized, and largely uninterested in leaving her marsh. It would be incredibly difficult for her to follow Tate on his adventures. Instead, Tate would have needed to forego graduate school and move home to maintain a relationship with Kya. For Tate, who wants a higher education, a job in the sciences, and a chance to explore the world, those expectations are stifling. Eventually, Tate’s job brings him home, and he realizes that his love for Kya is more important than anything else -- but he needed to establish his career and grow as an individual before settling down.
Who killed Chase?
Where the Crawdads Sing makes it clear that Chase is a man with enemies. He’s got a drinking and gambling problem, and he cheats on his fiancée with multiple women. Considering this, it’s unjust and prejudiced that the town immediately accuses Kya of his murder. The evidence against her is weak, and much of the town’s suspicions toward her are founded in classism. The novel explores how the justice system unfairly targets lower-class people, as well as racial minorities. So, it comes as a surprise when it’s revealed at the very end of the novel that Kya actually was Chase’s murderer. After Kya’s death, Tate finds her stash of private belongings, including a poem by Amanda Hamilton, Kya’s literary pseudonym, which describes the murder, as well as the shell necklace that was missing from Chase’s body. During the courtroom trial, the prosecution presents what seems like an unlikely, even ridiculous, series of events and conditions that would have allowed Kya to commit the perfect murder. In fact, the prosecution’s theory is correct, and the trial serves to describe to the reader exactly how Kya went about killing Chase.
Why did Kya kill Chase?
After Kya discovers that Chase has gotten engaged, despite their own romantic affair, she cuts off contact with him. For some time, Chase seems content to leave her alone, but eventually, feeling spurned by Kya, he begins to bother her. At first, he intends to strike up their romance again, but once Kya rejects him, he becomes angry. Eventually, Chase follows Kya to a remote sandbar, where he attempts to rape her. When she fights him off, he beats her extensively, and although she escapes, she knows that Chase will continue to stalk and attack her until he inevitably kills her. Kya has experience with angry, alcoholic men, and she has no intention of living in fear the way she did as a child, when she was subjected to her father’s abusive whims. So instead of hiding in fear from Chase, she decides to lure him to a remote location where she can kill him, permanently saving herself from his violent behavior.
