During this Chapter Callum finds it difficult to persuade Jude ad Morgan that Andrew Dorn was a snitch. Eventually they began to believe him. They want to come clean to the rest of the LM but they knew that they would need evidence.

Jude, Callum and Morgan decided to split up so they wouldn’t get caught, and were to meet back up at Callum’s Birthday in 6 months.

Sephy is Pregnant and tries to hide it from everyone, but her sister Minnie figures it out. When her sister Minnie spills to their parents, they demand for her to have an abortion. Word of Sephy’s pregnancy leaks to the media and Callum’s hears one day on the radio. He quit his job as a mechanic to get to Sephy.

They meet in the rose garden, but as it was heavily secured Callum is captured and taken away to jail. Sephy tries telling her father that he wasn’t one of his kidnappers but her refuses to believe this. She tells them that he is the father of her baby.

During this chapter, many key events occur, in which are all very exciting but nearly devastating at the same time.

It starts with Sephy at her boarding school school Chivers, she is finally moving on with her life, and making plans for the future, and enables herself to only look forward, rather than back, and remind herself of the constant heartbreak of Callum and Society back home.

Meanwhile, Callums life has become the Liberation Militia and only the Liberation Militia, he dropped everything to join the group, his family, friends and even Sephy when she had left for boarding school. He has made it higher and higher up the ranks each time he succeeded a job, but although this, he feels that he has lost himself, as he feels no remorse for the things that he has done. The members of Callum’s cell are Morgan, Pete and Leila.

Callum has no contact with his mother or Jude for over three years, then one day Jude suddenly reappears in his life as he has been sent to access the cell’s efficiency.

When Sephy finally returns home, she is tricked by Callum and kidnapped by him and his cell. Sephy cannot believe that Callum betrayed her like that.

The LM General’s second-in-command turns up to oversee the operation. Sephy recognises this man but thinks nothing about it. She also expects to be killed as Callum’s cell has made no effort in hiding their identities.

On the day of the ransom drop, after telling Andrew Dorn about their plans, the cell is unexpectedly accompanied by the police during the operation, but lucky two of the decide to last minute change their positions so only the other two were captured. Callum realised that Andrew Dorn was the only other person who knew their plans so he was obviously the snitch.

When Callum and Sephy are alone, they kiss and make love.When Jude returns he assumed that he raped her. The brother fight and sephy ran away. IN the woods Callum found Sephy, he helps her escape, and Sephy informs him that she recognised Andrew from somewhere and she realised that he was one of the body guards of his dad, and he was obviously trying to get inside information on the Liberation Militia. He is a spy.

This Chapter is filled with drama filled events which are very intriguing as always.

Sephy, Minerva and their mother are forced to go with their father to the hanging of Callum’s father Ryan. Sephy was unaware of where they were going, i guess this is because if she had’ve known she would’ve resisted going. The reason for them going was because it would be good for their father political career, not because they were going as a family, they were forced.

When Callum sees Sephy at the prison he is filled with anger and hatred towards her, but he doesn’t know that she didn’t know they were coming here.

Before Ryan was about to be hung, he was reprieved. Although this should be something good for him as he still has a chance of getting out and being proven innocent, he is mad as he thinks that being dead is better than rotting away in prison.

In Ryan’s short meeting with his family and Kelani Adams, he tells them of his plans to escape, but is warned by the guard standing nearby that he will not live if he tries to escape as there are other prison guards surrounding the area at all times.

Sephy finds out that her mother paid for Callum’s father legal expenses in an argument about how she was forced to go to the prison that day. They end the argument when Sephy accuses her mother of doing it only because she has a guilty conscience.

Callum shows up at Sephy’s house on a mission to show her how much he resents her but instead ends up spending the night and nearly get caught by Sephy’s mother the next day in the morning when they overslept.

Ryan McGregor dies as he attempts to escape the prison. Jude who followed in his footsteps and joined the Liberation Militia comes out from hiding to see Callum. He has asks him if he would like to join seeing the death of his father. Callum felt pressured by Jude as he knew that if he didn’t say yes he would never ask again, and probably never come into contact with Callum again.

Since Sephy’s house is now permanently guarded by guards now, he and Sephy can’t meet up. Sephy wrote a letter to him in which asked him to run away with her and they would make a life together. As Callum was getting ready to leave for the Liberation Militia, he didn’t read the letter till the next day, and when he arrived at Sephy’s house she was already driving off to boarding school.

During this Chapter the Trial begins. If Ryan is found guilty he will be sentenced to death by hanging. He was represented by the best of the best, Kalani Adams who is determined to proved that Ryan McGregor is rightfully innocent.

Callum’s house is constantly being vandalised, threats coming from each directions, and soon enough their home is burned down.

Callum was asked to testify his story of what happened in court as CCTV Footage was found of him leaving in a panic with Sephy, so they believe that he had something to do with this attack. He tells the Jury that he had to show Sephy something outside, and Sephy backs this story up. As they are close, the Jury isn’t fully convinced. But Kelani Adams brings in a retired Police Officer who was at the Cafe that day of which who also asked Sephy if she was okay when he saw Callum dragging her out of the Centre. He backs up Callum and Sephy’s story.

Sephy is unaware of her mother paying for the McGregors expenses and is wondering how they were able to afford them, whilst at the same time Callum is thinking about how he should thank her for doing this after what has been going on between them lately.

In the end, the Jury returns the decision that Ryan McGregor is guilty.

I believe that this is unfair due to the statements provided during this trial but they were obviously persuaded by the fact that seven innocent people were killed, if only they knew the truth.

This chapter is very well set out and the events are clear. These events are unfortunate and devastating to each family, in which their family will no longer be the same.

Callum’s parents are fighting because no one told Meggie what had happened between Lynette and Jude and now Lynette is dead. She blames her husband and Jude for this but mainly her husband.

Callum tells his father and Jude that he knows they are part of the Liberation Militia as they were leaving the house together for some secret meeting, and Callum wants to go with them but he is told not to follow them.

Sephy and Callum had another one of their secret phone calls and organised to meet at the Dundale Shopping Centre at the cafe as Sephy was going to be there anyways with her mother shoe shopping.

As Callum was about to leave the house to go meet Sephy, Jude stopped him. He had told him that something was going down at the shopping centre and that Callum was to stay away. Callum realised what was going on and remembered that sephy was waiting for him there. He bolted out of the door and raced to the shopping centre to save Sephy.

When he got there he quickly grabbed her and they ran out, as soon as they had gotten out of the building a bomb planted by the Liberation Militia had exploded, and by saving her, Sephy had got the clue that he knew this was going to happen, and of course, she thought he had something to do with this.

Meggie realised that Jude and Ryan were involved in the attack. She then broke her finger whilst slapping Ryan in the face. When Jude and Callum take their mother to the hospital, they had to provide a thumbprint for their system as new procedure in order for their mother to be treated.

Sephy is finding it difficult to cope with everything that is happening to her and she starts drinking alcohol and following in her mothers footsteps. She can’t take living around all these people and all these memories anymore so she asks to be sent away to boarding school.

After Callum’s home was raided by police, they were taken away and each of them were interrogated as Jude was suspected to be the bomber. Ryan confessed to the crimes to save his son.

His lawyer told Callum and Meggie that it would be pointless to present a defence in court as they couldn’t afford it and it wouldn’t be worth it considering the crimes committed. Ryan is found guilty and is to be hanged.

Callum and Meggie moved houses with other family members as they were receiving threats from strangers of the public. Their lawyer provides information that an anonymous person has offered to pay for all expenses with the lawyers in order for the fairest trial towards Ryan’s case. A Barrister is hired to represent Ryan at the Trial.

During this Chapter, many key events occur in which set out the plot for the rest of the story, and these events are very interesting.

One event that happens is Jude and Lynette fight. As Callum gets home he opens the door to this big feud between the two and his dad is standing in the middle of it all trying to stop them from killing each other.

Through this fight we come to know the truth about Lynette’s past and why she is so isolated now. She had a boyfriend that ‘wasn’t her kind’. And one night they were beaten up because of this and her boyfriend died. Lynette is still hurting from this event and she feels like she has lost a part of herself that night that she will never get back. As dad explains this to Jude, he feels sorry for Lynette and wishes he didn’t fight with her that night.

Callum’s mum found out about the fight that Jude and Lynette had at the dinner table one night, then when they were arguing about it Lynette had left the table and said she was going out for a walk. This was a surprise to everyone as since her partners death she had never wanted to leave the house by herself, especially after dark. Soon after she had left policeman had come to the house to report to the family of Lynette’s tragic death, she had died in a car crash.

After the policeman had left Callum went up stairs just to find a note, a suicide note, from Lynette, explaining everything, and only Callum knew, and only he would ever know what truly happened that night.

Whilst all of these events were appening at Callum’s house, many were happening at Sephy’s.

Sephy and her sister Minerva had found their mother on the lounge room floor passed out and nearly dead from an overdose. She has tried to kill herself due to all of the stress with her marriage and the kids. She had been drunk and taken too many sleeping pills, in which was the cause of this, well that is what everyone outside of the family was told. Sephy and Minerva had to call the ambulance and their mother was taken to hospital immediately. But at the hospital one of their mothers workers was trying to cover up her overdose, for the media that was, and due to this Sephy became very offended, that no one actually cared about what happened to her mother and they were more worried about the image that was being shown to the public about their family.

At Lynettes funeral, Sephy had shown up to show her remorse of what had happened to her. Everyone was baffled as she walked in, no one would’ve expected a Cross to show at a nought funeral. Callum’s dad was not too happy with this and tried not to make a scene when asking her to leave, but as she was being told this, Callum’s mother walked in and showed her the respect that she deserved. All in a couple of minutes a feud had blown up and Sephy was asked to leave.

In all of this one chapter all the these intriguing, overwhelming events happened in which made this book even more interesting.

During this Chapter, Callum and Sephy went to Celebration Park. But as their families don’t agree with them two seeing each other, they had to lie and go in secret.

One key event that occurred was when they were on the Train. As Sephy and Callum were talking they had realised that police officers were going around the train and checking out everyones Id’s. As they got to Callum and Sephy, they were constantly questioning Callum. This was obviously due to the fact that he was a nought. As Callum kept answering these unfair and irrelevant questions, and before they could kick him off for no typical reason, Sephy piped up and firmly told them that if they didn’t stop she’d tell her father. And him being the Home Office Minister, quickly made a big ipact on these officers opinions, and like that, they were too threatened to ask anymore questions and walked off.

I agreed with what Sephy did for Callum, which any caring person would, as they were treating him unfairly, and it was about time that someone stood up for ‘the other kind’ as not one but all of them go through this and no one cares, and no one shares their real opinions and just believes what society tells them, because that is all they know how to do.

During this chapter, Callum and sephy’s relationship has been put behind barriers, and seeing each other is becoming more and more difficult.

As Callum comes to school he is told by Shania that Sephy had been beaten up, and Callum feels terribly guilty, and races to her house straight after school. He is presented with a challenge when Sephy’s mothers assistant refuses to let Callum into the house to see if Sephy was okay. This was because he was a nought and no one agreed with their friendship. But as Sephy was in her bedroom the whole week, she was unaware of the occurring events of Callum coming to see her each day.

With reading this, I found myself not agreeing to this as clearly, their societies portrayal of what should happen with noughts and crosses is wrong, and everyone should be treated fairly. These two families are feuding with each other because of this, and in result, it is affecting who their children are able to be friends with and who are able to come in contact with in their every day lives.

Another event that was present was when sephy was in her room and her sister came to check up on her and she said that she wanted revenge. Sephy wanted revenge on those girls as much as her sister did, but she knew it would only make matters worse and she new that making an effort for those girls wasn’t even worth it. She was so worked up about the situation that she couldn’t even listen to what her sister had to say as she kept rambling on about revenge.

I feel that Sephy’s belief about revenge was correct, but i also think that these girls needed to be punished, and that what they did to sephy just because she sat at the same table as the noughts was wrong of them.

Chapter 1 of this novel presents two kids in high school, Calum and Sephy. Their society is believed to be separated in two, Noughts which are the Whites, and Crosses, which are the Blacks. These two have been friends since they could remember, but now that they go to the same school, things have changed.

Their society is very direct about how these two cultures should live, the Crosses are the ones in charge, and the Noughts are the ones who serve those who rule. And this is why their relationship is kept as a secret, who knows what they would do if someone was to find out about them, but then they did…

During this chapter Calum is excepted into Sephy’s School, Heath Croft. But because of the feud between these two cultures, on the First day of school, there was a riot. “No blanker’s in our school. No bankers in our school”, a statement shouted by the Crosses who attended the School. This is showing the conflict between Man and Society, Callum and the other Noughts against Society which is the White people. Only a few Noughts were let into the school because an exam was provided to keep most of them away.

Calum and Sephy’s relationship as impacted extremely. They came from two different cultures, but to the World, it was like two foreign countries. They couldn’t hang out at school without being talked about or told by a teacher to ‘stay with your own kind’.

The society that they live in had come to the point where when Sephy sat with the Noughts, she was beat up in the bathroom the next day. This is showing the conflict between Sephy and ‘her own kind’ just due to the fact that she sat with a different colour of people.

I feel that these opinions are unfair and that everyone should be treated equally because God created us as one, and humans in their world have created a reinforced image that everyone is forced to believe.

 

 

Chapter Summaries on the book Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman 

– By Bianca Young