This becomes immediately apparent when Cassia is able to trade with the Archivist at the museum with Xander. There is a strong emphasis throughout Crossed on those who are working with the Society and those who are against it. Green additionally symbolizes sparse life in the Carving, as Condie uses it to describe the vegetation surrounding the stream, which she enjoys observing in such a desolate landscape. In Crossed, it holds an important place as representing the past for Cassia, as she reminisces back to the aforementioned pieces of her past life many times throughout the book, particularly her dress. Green is the third of Condie’s color trifecta in the Matched series, and was in fact emphasized most heavily in the Matched novel, in which it was used to describe Cassia’s eyes, Matching Banquet dress, favorite color, and the vegetation of the Hill on which she and Ky kindled their love. Condie has previously described red as representing newness and birth, a fitting description for the transition that Cassia makes from being a member of the Society to a rebel reborn in opposition to it. Red also represents bloodshed at many points throughout Crossed, from when Indie and Cassia injure themselves while climbing and boating to Ky’s blood-stained hands when he is saying goodbye to Cassia. In Crossed, red is used to represent and describe many things, particularly the landscape of the Outer Provinces and the Carving, which are arid and rocky deserts that provide little life and, relatedly, no promise of survival. Red is one of the three colors employed emphatically by Allie Condie throughout the Matched series, and in fact is focused on most poignantly in the trilogy’s final book, Reached. Blue additionally comes to mean safety and security for Cassia and the others, as it describes the sky on which they can focus as they traverse the canyons, as well as the stream on which they rely for water and orientation as well as to get to the Rising.

That Hunter reveals that these lines represent connection is perhaps fitting for the book, as it serves as the second installment in a trilogy and therefore connects the story’s exposition and initial unfoldings in the first to its broader climax and conclusion in the third. It’s the color of the sky reflected in Vick's dead eyes, of the blue tubes in the Cavern, of the tablets that Xander gave to Cassia that make her sick, and finally, of the lines on the farmers’ bodies, including the corpses Indie and Cassia find.

It’s the first image the reader receives when Ky is standing in the river at the book’s opening. Blue comes to represent and describe many things over the course of Crossed.

Crossed matched series