Crow Lake Essay In Crow Lake, Mary Lawson portrays a family that experiences great tragedy when Mr. and Mrs. Morrison are killed in a car accident. This tragedy changes the lifestyle of seven-year-old protagonist Kate Morrison and her brothers Matt, Luke and Bo. Settings are very important in this novel. Although there are a limited number of settings available, the settings used are very effective. Without effective use of the themes in this novel, the reader would not have been able to connect with the characters and be sympathetic. Lawson uses an exceptionally high level of literary devices to develop each character in this novel. The element of setting is used to create a defined atmosphere and, therefore, contributes to creating the desired atmosphere. During Kate's childhood, she and Matt regularly visited the ponds. They used to go "through the woods with their lush growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty boxcars lined up to receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves" (Lawson 4 ). Lawson used powerful imagery to further describe the ponds. The pond settings are a central part of the story. The ponds are a symbol of the close relationship between Matt and Kate. They had spent “hundreds of hours there” (Lawson 15). The ponds were like a home to her. In the prologue, Kate states that “there is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than this” (Lawson 4). The ponds also symbolize Kate's childhood. Matt and Kate managed to overcome the tragedy of their parents' death by visiting the ponds, but they did not survive Matt's "disloyalty". The ponds later turned into the crime scene. Kate mentions in the book “By the following September the ponds themselves would be twice desecrated, so far as I was concerned, and for some years I did not visit them at all” (Lawson 218). Therefore, ponds are of great importance in Crow Lake. The setting developed from a warm, sweet, memorable place to a crime scene in Crow Lake. The theme of isolation is established and developed through the setting of Crow Lake. Set against the wilderness of northern Ontario, Crow Lake is a wary agricultural settlement that is "...connected to the outside world by a dusty road and railway tracks" (Lawson 9).