re: Where the Crawdads Sing

SPOILER FOR BOOK & MOVIE

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Guessing the necklace at the end is supposed to point to her?

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Yes. The book handles it better. In the book, Kya is fond of poetry and is occasionally reciting poems from her favorite poet (the end of the book also reveals that she is an accomplished, published poet under a pseudonym and the poems she had been reciting the entire book were actually her own. She kept that secret from everyone until death, including Tate). When Tate finds the necklace at the end, it is accompanied with a poem written by Kya about how female fireflies use their lights to attract potential male mates over to them, but the female ends up killing the male instead of mating with them. So the necklace with that poem makes it VERY clear she was the killer.

In the movie, she actually talks about the female fireflies killing the males during the brief dinner scene with the guy who wants to publish her book(s), but it is such a short scene that can be completely lost on the viewer. Not having that firefly story with the necklace reveal completed ruins the impact of the ending, imo. The significance of that firefly story was too easy to miss the way the movie did it.

Also, imo, the book does a better job of making you believe she is innocent the entire time. You read it thinking no way she did it and the "fake" trial was just to show the town's bias against her. So the reveal hits that much harder because, as the reader, you really believe that all of the "evidence" is bullshite. The movie loses a lot of that in translation - almost like it wants you to question whether or not she did it the entire time. Which is fine, but the ending loses impact if you questioned her innocence at all to some degree.