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Cadence, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren are best friends.
Lives on Beechwood Island during the summer as a part of the perfect Sinclair family. When Johnny, Mirren, and Gat are introduced in the book, Cadence says, "The family calls us four the Liars, and probably we deserve it […] Most years on the island, we've been trouble" (p. 7). It is hard to find out why they are named "The Liars", but during summer seventeen, small lies begin to pop up.

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1. What are ‘themes’ in a novel?
A literary theme is the main idea or underlying meaning a writer explores in the novel. The theme of a story is often connected with for example the characters and the setting. A theme links a big idea about our world with the action of a text. It can be a statement, lesson, or message.

2. How can we work out what they are?
To work out what the themes are in a text it helps to think: what is this about? And what can the message behind the text be?

The themes explored in this novel are wealth and greed, imagine vs. reality, and death and loss.

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We Were Liars is a storm full of mysteries and suspense, the novel is intense and emotional.

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By Emily Jenkins
Published: 13.05.2014
Genre: Young Adult Fiction

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The main setting in the novel takes place at Beechwood Island. Harris Sinclair owns the private island where he and his family spend their summers. The private island is described as a fantastic and lovely place, and the island creates a sense of silence and wealthiness. At Beechwood Island there are four houses for each family: Windemere, Cuddledown, Red Gate, and Clairmont, which later becomes New Clairmont after the fire.

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Harris Sinclair, Cadence's granddad bought the island for his family: his wife, Tipper, and his three daughters, Penny, Carrie, and Bess. There was built a house on the island for each of them, and now all three generations of Sinclairs. They all. spend each summer there.

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Gat is from New York and the nephew of Ed, which doesn't make him into a Sinclair. Ed is in a relationship with Carrie, one of the Sinclair sisters. Even though Gat is not bound by blood he has been spending the summers at the island since he was eleven. Gat is described as an intelligent, smart, and curious person. It also seems like he is a thinker and enjoys discussing different topics. For example, when Gat was discussing the ownership over the private island. He thought that "Maybe land shouldn't belong to people at all. [...]". As Gat has joined the family, he got close with Cadence, Mirren, and Johnny, they are called the Liars. Over the summers Cady and Gat fall in love, and during the fifteenth summer, they had their first kiss. Even though Gat has a girlfriend back in New York it seems like he is returning Cadence's affection.

Gat is the most described character in the novel, which might be because of the narrative point of view, Cadence's point of view. His appearance is described as broad shoulders, black hair, a sweet mouth, and deep brown, smooth skin.

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Johnny is the second-oldest Sinclair grandchild and the oldest one of Carrie's children. He lives in New York with his mother, brother, and his mother's boyfriend Ed. Johnny is described as a carefree person and quite a contrast from Gat, as he is not as serious and often jokes around. Cadence describes Johnny as "bounce, effort, and snark".

Mother: Carrie Sinclair
Stepdad:  Ed
Brother: Will

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Mirren is one of the oldest Sinclair grandchildren and Bess's oldest child. Her siblings are Taft and the twins Bonnie and Liberty. It seems like Cady and Mirren are good friends and Cadence describes her as "sugar, curiosity, and rain".

Mother: Bess Sinclair
Brother: Taft Sinclair, 10 years old in summer seventeen.
Sisters: Twins - Bonnie and Liberty, 14 years old in summer seventeen.

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Cadence is the oldest grandchild of the Sinclair Family and the narrator of the novel. As she suffers from a brain injury, she is an unreliable narrator. She is from Burlington, Vermont, where she lives with her mother Penny, and their three dogs. Cady is "nearly eighteen", has black-dyed hair, and suffers migraines. Her father left the family the year she turned 15. The whole situation with her father leaving her seems to have put a significant impact on her as she describes him leaving as "He pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. [...]" (page 5).

Cadence and the family, her aunts, cousins, and grandparents spend their summers on the private Beechwood Island.

The novel follows Cadence as she suffers a mysterious accident that leaves her with a head injury and no memory of the events leading up to it.

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The narrator of this novel is Cadence with a first-person point of view. As a reader, we only get to know and experience Cadense's thoughts, feelings, and what she wants to share with us. Therefore, we do not get to know what the other characters think or experience, the point of view is subjective. Often Cady puts the other characters in a negative light, but as a reader, we can't really know if that is the way the characters really are or if it is just how Cady sees them. The point is: as we get the story served from Cady, we get to see the world from a limited view. Cady is an unreliable narrator; this puts the reader in a position of questioning a lot of things. Reading this novel, you especially question things, conversations, and events to be real or just something Cadence is imaging. In other words, this narrative point of view makes you as a reader second-guessing a lot of things throughout the book. The point of view also affects the story with a mysterious and ominous impression as it raises questions.

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Penny Sinclair is the oldest of the Sinclair children and the mother of Cadence. She creates an impression of trying to be as perfect as possible on the outside but really is broken on the inside.

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Cadence's father was married into the Sinclair family but did not like it there anymore. Therefore, he left his family for another woman.

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1.How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?
The importance of historical and cultural context in the production and reception of a text is important, but it also is dependent on the type of the book. The context of a book creates a bigger understanding to people. Details and valuable information for example about characters would not have as bigger meaning without the historical and cultural context.

2.To what extent do texts offer insight into a real-world culture?
By reading a book we can get a first-person point of view, like in We Were Liars. This makes us readers create connections with the characters in the book, and in that. way we can connect the person, its thoughts, and feelings into a real-world culture. The insight into a real-world culture depends on the book you are reading. Some books give us insight of for example how life is for certain social groups and base the book on a life in a real-world culture. And other books might not explore or draw as many lines into the real-world as others.

3.How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?
The way we approach texts from different times and cultures varies. We all have different interests and things we like, and this affects us in how we approach the texts. If there is a topic about something, you fint interesting you will approach the text with curiosity and motivation. But you might not be as interested or curios if there is something you find boring. The way we approach the texts are dependent on how we as individuals feels around each topic.

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Harris Sinclair owns Beechwood Island, he bought the private island with his late wife, He is the Liars grandfather and Tipper. Penny, Carrie, and Bess are his and Tipper's children. He seems to be a kind of conflict maker as he often puts his grandchildren up against each other and he also uses his money and wealth to control his daughters.

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Tipper passed away before summer fifteen on Beechwood of heart failure. She left an impression of loving her children and family. Cadence describes her as. "a stunning woman, even when she was old. White hair, pink cheeks: tall and angular".

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The first page of the novel makes you as a reader question if something bad is going to happen. Already on the first page, Cady says:

"It doesn't matter if there's a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table. It doesn't matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.
So much

in love

that equally desperate measures

must be taken". (p. 3)

When the author, Lockhart, opens the book with a "foreshadowing" like this, you get the feeling as there is something bad going to happen, you just don't know what. This makes us as readers explore and read in a different kind of way, we search after the thing that is going to happen It becomes a mystery to us and we can picture glimpse of a tragedy.

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"It doesn't matter if there's a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table".

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The Sinclairs want to be perfect, and the book starts by telling us how perfect the family is.
"No one is a criminal.
No one is an addict.
No one is a failure.
The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive".

Seems like a perfect wealthy family in the beginning, but soon the novel shows great contrasts from the beginning. The family is wealthy yet so broken. On the same page as the Sinclairs are shown perfect, Cadence mention: divorce, pill bottles, unpaid bills, and trust-fund money running out. These small things draw a bigger picture of a broken family, and as we later get to know: the Sinclairs are not the ideal family. The ideal family is often pictured with a mother, father, and two children, but in this family, all the daughters are divorced or in new relationships.

The point here is: the tone is gloomy and with fake perfections, as the Sinclairs are pictured as great and wealthy but in the reality, they are just a broken family.

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4.What social issues from the real-world are dealt with by your novel? Do some research on one issue that you think is addressed in your novel and write a little about it (be sure to include some facts and statistics

Racism is a social issue that the novel is raising. Gat is experiencing racism as he is the only non-white privilege person on the island. Racism is a big social issue today, where someone is experiencing discrimination because of the color of their skin. The reason racism is raised in the novel might be because of its part in American society. Following BBC slavery is a bigger issue in the USA than the rest of the world since there is less improvement and action again the racism. Also, facts are that the once was allowed with slavery and the county had their own laws for slavery. All this relates to the history and racism in the USA is a big problem today. Lockhart adresses the issue since it is such an important message to spread and make people aware.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44158098

5.Add some key quotes from the book connected to that contextual issue, and write down what comment you think the novel is making on this thing
"You know what I am to your grandfather? What I've always been?"

Gat is uncomfortable with how Harris Sinclair's attitude and behavior is around him, and he knows it is because he is an Indian American.

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News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black. Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.

Last week in California, three black people - a Jamaican, a Canadian of Nigerian descent, and a London native - were confronted by seven police cars as they checked out of their Airbnb because a white American thought they were robbing the house.

Though they were not American, they were still subjected to racist American stereotypes - and being confronted with tense, potentially life-threatening altercations with police without ever committing a crime.

I've travelled a fair amount around the world, but America's racist status quo remains unique and alarmingly oppressive. American racism is entirely complexion-based and monolithic. One's nationality is immaterial.

Years ago during one of my trips to France, a woman at La Poste refused to sell me stamps because she thought I was African.

When she learned that I was American, she apologised and sold me the stamps. The racism I experienced in France is totally unacceptable, but it provided an escape not afforded last week to these three visitors to America.

In France, nationality usurped race, and while that can have its own problems, it was still very different from the racism back home.

When I was in London, I lived in Bethnal Green during the 2011 riots, which started after London police officers killed Mark Duggan, a black man.

As teenage vandals looted and set my neighbourhood ablaze, I remember casually walking down the street during the chaos and having a London police officer politely ask me to return to my flat. There was no tense exchange, I was not arrested, and I never feared for my life.

During the week of the riots, Londoners openly discussed how black people might receive different treatment from law enforcement, but conversations focused on analysing policing techniques, discussing ways to keep teenagers off of the streets during the summer when they do not have school, and catching looters via CCTV.

In the American discourse, a supposedly inherent danger or criminality of black bodies would have been used to justify the police's killing of Duggan and present the riots as an inevitable by-product of a "culture of crime". The killing of Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson followed this all-too-familiar American script.

Racism towards black people in America has largely nothing to do with immigration or nationality. There is no home country for African-Americans to connect to. Instead it is essentially a status quo of domestic alienation, dehumanisation, criminalisation, and terror. European racism is bad, but it was still more welcoming than America's.

America's systemic racism starts with slavery and the various slave codes - state or federal laws created that codified the inhumane practice of chattel slavery into law. The American South was a "slave society", not merely a society with slaves. However, following the abolition of slavery, laws similar to the slave codes continued to oppress black people.

Following the Civil War, these "black codes" had the explicit purpose of depriving newly freed black Americans of the rights they had won. Black codes varied from state to state, but their legal foundation centred on vagrancy laws that allowed for an African American to be arrested if he was unemployed or homeless. They applied to countless blacks because housing and employment opportunities for freed blacks in the South were almost non-existent after the war.

Supporters of Virginia's Vagrancy Act of 1866, one of these measures, stated that it would reinstitute "slavery in all but its name".

White Southerners would report blacks for vagrancy, and law enforcement would arrest them and sentence African-Americans to up three months of forced labour on public or private lands.

The federal government fought against black codes during Reconstruction by electing former abolitionists and freed blacks to public office, and creating laws and adding amendments to the US Constitution to protect the rights of black Americans.

But following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern states brought them back. Black codes became the bedrock of state constitutions. Poll taxes and literacy exams to prevent African Americans from voting soon became the norm. Jim Crow and racial segregation, which governed the South until the 1960s, are outgrowths of those laws.

As black families fled the South in the 20th Century during the Great Migration, black codes followed them to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and elsewhere. Black Americans - who were domestic refugees fleeing state-funded terrorism - allegedly brought crime, unemployment, vagrancy, and drugs. Police departments across America responded with more black codes and aggressive policing of black communities.

Black life has always been criminalised and dehumanised in America. During Barack Obama's presidency, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless other unarmed African-Americans were killed by police, but with a black president many Americans felt progress was attainable. Social media raised awareness of these injustices and helped create the Black Lives Matter movement.

Under President Donald Trump, we have the same type of violence that America has always had, but now we have, at best, an indifferent federal government, and at worst a racist president. Due to this change, more white Americans are emboldened to re-employ black codes.

Under Obama, social media championed our desire for progress, and today it documents our obvious regression.

Last week in New York City, a black lawyer and her 19-year-old daughter were handcuffed and detained by police after being falsely accused of shoplifting. During the same week, the police were called by a white student at Yale University because a black Yale student was sleeping in the common area in their dormitory. In late April, an African-American family had the police called on them by a white woman for having a cookout in a public park.

Following the arrest of two black men for sitting in a Starbucks, and the increased awareness of similar injustices, the world can more clearly see the racist applications of the law that black people constantly face in America. Their arrest was black codes in 2018, but without the three months of forced labour.

Trump's presidency has exacerbated the problem and social media has raised awareness, but employing black codes and masquerading oppression against black people as democratic justice and fair law enforcement has sadly always been America's status quo.

Barrett Holmes Pitner is a writer and journalist based in Washington, DC.

Correction: An earlier version of this report incorrectly stated that Trayvon Martin was killed by police.

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Viewpoint: Why racism in US is worse than in Europe

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Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.

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Early in the book Lockhart shows that the Sinclairs are a part of the upper-class family, are wealthy and privileged. We can address the wealth through looking at a lot of things in this novel. For example, even though the sisters of Sinclair are educated none of them has a real job. Their father, Harris is their provider, and they are all living of his trust-funds. These sisters are able to not work but still be materialistic and loves the rich life. When people can distance from work and any income at all we can clearly say that they are wealthy and privileged. The private island and the setting itself can symbolize this wealth as well. To be able to own an island, a land is well privileged and a sign to be wealthy.
With wealth comes the jealous and greed, the Sinclair sisters have a tense relationship as they argue about money and heritage after their mother Tipper dies. The sisters stand to inherit a lot of money from Harris, but the greed gets them and seems to control their lives. Their summers is mostly spent to argue with each other about money and possessions.

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The novel puts a lot of focus on the theme "family". They are all family and live isolated on the island during the summers. The family and its fortune are particularly important, the island is built on fortune and is also the reason the family is together. Do we believe they would spend time together if there was no island? No, not when their relationship is not as great. The novel puts light on the theme of family and shows us the "non-ideal family". The Sinclairs are not the ideal family. The ideal family is often pictured with a mother, father, and two children, but in this family, all the daughters are divorced or in new relationships.

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The Sinclair family seems to not want to deal with the grief and loss in their family, this has a connection with their "perfect image" of the family.

There is a lot of loss and grief in the family, Tipper dies from heart disease, Mirren, Johnny, and Gat die in a fire. But the family avoids the pain and grief. A great example is how Harris Sinclair built the new Clairmont "on the top of the ashes of his dead grandchildren". Again, they put a cover on the reality and do not want to show what is bad and sad.

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The island is a symbol of the Sinclair family's wealth.
Gat wonders how it is possible that one person can own an island. To the rest of the family, it is normal to them and none of them is questioning it.

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The Sinclair's wealth and greatness are shown in the novel by fairytales. Cadenced often compares and sees her life as a fairytale, often in a royal and privileged way. Cadence's use of fairytales makes the story more dramatic but also relatable. As a reader, you get a fuller understanding of the picture Cadence is trying to draw by recognizing and relating to it.
Again, each fairytale can symbolize something individual. An example is the "Dragon Fairytale". In the fairytale, a king sends his three daughters, one by one, to a dragon, who ends up eating them all. One can think that this is a symbol of how Harris is spoiling the daughters and being their provider, which leads to the daughters being helpless and strongly dependent.

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In the Sinclair Family, there is five Golden Retrievers: Bosh, Poppy, and Grendel belonging to Penny and Cadence, while Fatima and Prince Philip belong to Harris and Tipper. As Golden Retrievers the dogs are beautiful, but useless compared to for example hunting dogs. In other words, the goldens do not have a job rather than looking pretty and exist. The appearance of the dogs is blonde and pretty, and the dogs are dependent on care, attention, and a provider.  Here we can draw similarities with the Sinclair daughters, they also do not have jobs, are blond, and seems to be dependent on a provider who takes care of them.

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- What did the characters learn?
Throughout the novel, Cadence got to know the real side of her family with all the imperfections. She also learned and remembered what happened to her during the summer.

- How did they grow and change?
Cadence as the main character in the book developed a lot during the story. The novel starts with her not being able to. tell what had happened the summer fifteenth, but as the story goes on, she starts to remember things. In the end, she recovers her memory, and it is a big difference from how she started out as. Cadence as a character develops and changes a lot through the book. For example, through the book, we get to see her as someone greedy who wants it all, like her aunts. But the novel also shows us a great contrast from this because we are also. get to see Cadenced as someone who wants to give back to the community and help out.

- Why did characters act the way they acted?
- she had limited memory, made her search and she felt. alone?
- the ghosts trying to be there for cadence so she wouldn't blame herself when she finds out

- What's different at the end of the story?
The biggest difference from the start till the end is Cadence's memory. And what feels real and not.

- What stays with you after the story is over?
After reading the story I'm left with a lot of emotions and questions. I was shocked by all the conversations and events that I thought were real, but really was just something Cadence made up or the ghosts of the dead ones. This is a book I want to re-read because I feel like I missed a lot of hints and clues. But also, I believe this is a book you want to read without knowing anything because if you get any spoilers, it could ruin the whole experience with the reading.

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My Gat

Wanted true love for us
did you really want the same?
such great time
such great connection

so many questions
questions that never will be answered
now our pulse is no more
your pulse is no more