Cue For Treason Geoffrey Crease Character Analysis

In the Novel Cue for Treason Geoffrey Trease is able to develop a strong sense of theme throughout the entirety of the story. The statement that best puts into words the theme of this book is: You grow through making mistakes and facing their repercussions. This theme comes up at many points in the book, some of which are interconnected in order to convey the idea. One of the quotations that portrays this idea extremely well is located right at the beginning of the book, in the first chapter in fact. This quotation is from when Peter, as well as his father and brother, are quietly sneaking down to Sir Philip’s wall and there is a sense of reminiscing from Peter “But it’s no good crying over spilt milk, and perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing after all.”(15) This is an example of foreshadowing and in this case, it shows that whatever did happen was for the better, hinting at growth in some

way. In addition to this, the foreshadowing is told from the voice of Peter, and sounds considerably more mature than the foolish boy who threw a rock at his powerful foe.

This also helps to establish the concept of personal growth for Peter and maturity we would not expect to see gauging by the beginning of the book. Another situation that greatly brings the theme of growth into play is when Peter is attempting to retrieve his play script from the house of the yellow gentleman “…I wasn’t an experienced government agent then, and it wasn’t second nature to me to do these things. I was a boy with his heart in his mouth, scared that at any moment the yellow gentleman might come back –…” (137) This excerpt is a beautifully composed piece of writing as it shows that instead of being the young and reckless boy that on a whim, threw a rock at Sir Philip, Peter has matured and has a remarkably evolved sense of judgement. This displays that Peter can now be put into a life or death position and control his impulses in order to stop and think while still being a young boy in fear for his

life. This is a particularly important quotation due to its placement in the middle of the novel and how it shows growth in 2 ways. The second of which is that the first sentence of the quotation tells us that though Peter has already grown to become a completely different person than he was towards the beginning of the novel, he still has much more opportunity for maturing ahead of him. This idea is conveyed through the rather strong use of foreshadowing in the sense that it gives us premature insight into what Peter’s life will become. The final quotation that gives off an extremely strong sense of growth in Peter is found in the last few pages of the book during Peter and Kit’s meeting with the Queen “ ‘Your Majesty’ I said ‘there are some common lands which have been ours and our neighbors’ since time immemorial… Will you hand them back to us..?’ ” (280-81) This quotation shows just how far Peter has come in more ways than one. Just a year back, he was a young, foolish, rather insignificant boy living in Cumberland and now he is sitting next to the Queen after just having saved her life alongside Kit. This line from Peter also shows that although Peter has undergone growth unlike what many of us will ever experience and has against all odds survived time and time again, he is still the same boy from Cumberland in one sense, all he really wanted was his farm land which he continued to fight for throughout the duration of the story. Through effectively establishing a sense of theme early on in the novel and carrying and building upon it throughout the story, Geoffrey Trease was able to create a story that everyone can relate to in some way, regardless of the time they are reading it.