Code Name Verity Spoiler Friendly Zone discussion

I'm new to Goodreads, but thrilled to find a spoiler-ish discussion group on my favorite YA novel of the year so far. Since no one has started a discussion yet, I will step into the breach.

I think we ought to start with the ending--not the ending of the overall plot, which almost comes across as anticlimactic, but the ending of Maddie and Julie's story. Among other things, I hope this exercise will be therapeutic for those of us still feeling stunned by That Scene.

So... Maddie is forced, under duress, to shoot her best friend. (It feels dangerous just to type that, but I hope there's no one here who doesn't already know how the book ends!) I think we can all agree that no other ending would have been as effective--but why does it work so well? Specifically, what would happen to the quality of the book if any of the following things had happened instead?

1) Someone--Maddie, or Paul and the other Resistance fighters--manages to effect a last-minute rescue (or perhaps the raid simply goes according to plan in the first place), allowing our girls to have their tearful reunion, joint destruction of Gestapo headquarters, trip back to England, and lifetime of reminisces over their adventure in France.

2) Julie still dies, but in some more conventional manner less shocking and/or emotinally devastating for the reader (as almost anything would be). Maybe she's shot by the Nazis, taken on to die slowly at some camp, blown up in an air raid--whatever.

The possibilities for screwing up the perfect ending are limitless--let's eliminate them one by one!

Hm. (view spoiler)[I think that part of why it's effective is that we feel that a war story needs to contain loss in order to feel "true." I mean that if the rescue worked and they walked off into a green sunset, there would be a potential for it to feel cheap. Like, don't they know there's a war on? I'm not sure why, but one of the routes to verisimilitude is sacrifice. And while there are characters that Maddie and Julie care about that much, as the reader, the characters I really care about are Maddie and Julie. (Okay, I like Jamie, too. But I'm not attached to any of the others, even Jamie, the way I am to Maddie and Julie.)

And war stories especially require loss or sacrifice, I think. In The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, what's-her-name, the main character, describes her American suitor as being "untouched by the War," and then muses that she wouldn't want to be the sort of person who could live through that and not be touched by it. Which, I think, is related to what I'm trying to get at about sacrifice.

It's true that sacrifice needn't necessarily come in the form of character death. It could come in the aftermath of being a prisoner of the Gestapo/a fugitive in occupied France. And I think that Wein has enough skill that she could've handled the emotional weight of that ending successfully. But that would be a more difficult ending to write -- that it, mechanically more difficult. "Julie dies, Maddie is rescued, Maddie debriefs" runs you though the wringer, but it's straightforward. Emotional/psychological aftermath gets muddy and confused and peters out slowly, rather than in a pat ending. Possibly "it's more concise this way" is the worst justification ever for killing off a main character. But, well, it is.

Julie dying some other way runs the risk of lack of closure, I think. What was it Maddie says? "I don't believe she's dead, and I won't believe it until I hear the shots myself and see her fall"? (And brr, the first time I re-read that after knowing the end, it really gave me chills.) If Maddie's not there, doesn't see it, then there's that not knowing -- which, I suppose, is also the story of WWII, but sometimes a novel needs to be neater than real life. If it ended in ambiguity, it would be a different story.

Or, how's this? If Julie died some other way, then CNV becomes a story about passive subjects: women that things happen to. Because that's not how it is. Julie asked, and Maddie acted, making it a story about active characters, characters with agency. Perhaps not the agency to effect the ending you wish they'd gotten, the jolly girls' adventure story ending, but nevertheless, they have ability to determine what happens to them, within certain confines. (hide spoiler)]

(Enough late-night rambling. Time to post this and go to bed.)

Having Julie die because of Nazi torture or being shot by them during the escape attempt probably would have been more realistic, but because Maddie had to do it their friendship is highlighted and the lengths to which they go for each other.

I see this as a book about female friendship against all odds (war, class, torture, etc.) first and foremost - the likelihood that a Gestapo Officer would let Julie ramble on and on about her past to get at bits of data is very low in reality, as well - I see that as a brilliant plot device.

What was it Maddie says? "I don't believe she's dead, and I won't believe it until I hear the shots myself and see her fall"? (And brr, the first time I re-read that after knowing the end, it really gave me chills.)

Likewise (for me) Julie's comment to the effect that if she's really lucky, she'll find a way to get herself shot.

You can tell this book is YA--not a ruthlessly realistic adult novel--by the author's kindness in at least letting Julie know Maddie is alive before she dies. (I've just finished Orwell's Burmese Days, a book in which, if any good thing whatsoever happens to any character, you can bet it's only a setup for a bigger fall later on!)

Julie may prefer Orwell, but much of the time I'll stick with YA. (Mind you, I'm currently reading Brave New World, which I associate with Orwell via 1984.)

My view: I was not expecting that scene, and I more or less had expected a last minute rescue which probably would have left me satisfied by the novel as a whole rather than awestruck. I think Estera's comment is right, it highlighted the friendship between the two women and the extreme sacrifice being made... Otherwise it would be like many another wartime adventure story.

Miriam wrote: "Hm. I think that part of why it's effective is that we feel that a war story needs to contain loss in order to feel "true." I mean that if the rescue worked and they walked off into a green sunse..."

This is exactly how I feel about the ending. I, of course, hoped that Julie would make it back to Maddie and Jamie, but I think it is the right ending for the story. I read and re-read that part of the book over and over again just because I honestly love it so much. I don't love that Julie died, but it just feels like Julie needed to make that sacrifice and Maddie needed to be the one who shot the gun.. It wouldn't have been the same for me if they had just skipped off together happily.