Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Six of Crows, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed
Friendship and Difference
Trauma, the Past, and Moving Forward
Identity, Values, and Growing Up
Summary
Analysis
Nina struggles to heal Inej’s body. She’s not trained for this: she’s a killer, a Heartrender, and killing is easier than healing. Having done all she can, Nina monitors Inej’s breathing and heartrate, and she inspects the lack of tattoos on Inej’s arms. The Menagerie tattoo has been removed badly, leaving scars; and Inej isn’t tattooed with the Dregs’ crow and cup. That’s strange, especially given how close Kaz and Inej seem to be. Losing herself in memories, Nina thinks of Zoya, a Grisha leader who’d grudgingly agreed to send Nina out on her first mission. Now, Jesper interrupts Nina’s thoughts: he’s looking for Matthias’s leg shackles. He suddenly becomes serious, says Inej can’t die, and leaves.
While Inej is unconscious, Nina gets the opportunity to glean important information about Inej. That Inej isn’t tattooed with the Dregs’ tattoo suggests that Inej isn’t as invested in the gang as her and Kaz’s close and almost romantic relationship might suggest. Her terribly-removed Menagerie tattoo, meanwhile, perhaps points to the trauma and violence Inej suffered while she was there—and the lengths she was willing to go to in order to get out.
Themes
As she sits with Inej, Nina thinks of how Zoya and the other Grisha wanted to save Grisha from the drüskelle and rebuild the Second Army in Ravka. They sent Grisha out to find others living in secret, which is how Nina ended up traveling with Zoya to the Wandering Isle. They’d recruited several Grisha—and then, when Zoya hurt Nina’s feelings, Nina had stormed off, right into a drüskelle camp. They took her hostage, and to protect her colleagues, Nina didn’t reveal she was Ravkan or scream for help. The drüskelle chained her up in a ship with other Grisha and fed their prisoners only enough to keep them alive. The young Fjerdans often came belowdecks to taunt the prisoners.
The Ravkan Grisha and the Fjerdan drüskelle have totally opposing goals: bolstering Grisha and exterminating them, respectively. Keep in mind that Nina is only a young teenager in this flashback. Thus, her youthful pouting and storming off makes more sense—and it gives Nina a starting point from which to mature over the rest of the novel. However, Nina maturely rejects selling out her friends and her cause. She takes the fall, saving her fellow Grisha and the Ravkan project in the process.
Themes
Then, one day, an older drüskelle commanding officer came belowdecks: Jarl Brum, the “monster waiting in the dark” who transformed the drüskelle into a huge, deadly force and began leading raids on Grisha in other countries and even on slave ships. He told the Grisha they’d stand trial for their crimes, praised the young drüskelle, and left. The young drüskelle, pleased with their work, discussed raping Nina, but the handsome one who captured Nina (Matthias) spat that it’d be like having sex with a dog. Matthias was the last drüskelle belowdecks, and Nina had asked him what her crime was and if any Grisha are ever found innocent. He refused to answer and called her a witch, but he brought her fresh water when she begged. Later, the tin cup in the water bucket saved her life.
Brum’s appearance is somewhat shocking, especially given that earlier, Matthias referred to Brum as his “mentor.” Here, readers see what kind of a mentor Brum was. He taught his young charges to hate and dehumanize Grisha—this is why Matthias suggests that raping Nina would be akin to bestiality. Matthias’s non-answer to Nina’s question is in itself telling: Grishas’ crime, in the Fjerdans’ eyes, is existing. Still, Matthias shows a glimmer of humanity when he brings her the water.
Themes
Now, back in the present, Nina jerks awake. Inej is still asleep and stable, and Matthias is standing in the doorway. Reminding herself that Matthias is a murderer, Nina taunts him by speaking in Fjerdan, and even makes his heart race when he threatens her. She feels immediately bad, though, and turns her attention to Inej. Matthias wants to know if Inej will live. He cares because Inej is a fellow human—and Nina knows that the subtext is that she, a Grisha, is not. When Matthias asks how Nina knows about the White Rose, she shows him her tattoo denoting that she works there, but she doesn’t tell him she didn’t engage in sex work. She explains that she stayed in Kerch to try to get Matthias out of Hellgate, since her mistake landed him there.
While readers don’t know the full story of Matthias and Nina’s history together, it’s clear they’re both hurting and keeping information from each other, such as Nina’s choice not to say she didn’t engage in sex work. Still, Nina continues to insist that she’s honorable and cares about Matthias, even if he sees her as subhuman—something she seems to suggest actually makes her more human, and a better one at that.
Themes
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As Matthias and Nina argue, Matthias notes that the bruises he left on Nina’s neck are gone. She understands that he’s a decent person inside after spending weeks alone with him after the shipwreck, but he had to “[fight] his own decency” to become a drüskelle. Now, they discuss what they’ve dreamed of over the last year. Matthias admits that he always dreamed of Nina, and he admits that he once loved her.
Here, Nina introduces the idea that hate is learned—and Matthias’s upbringing was steeped in hatred. But she also suggests that it’s possible for him to find who he used to be, the ”decent” person he was born as. The fact that Matthias can admit he used to love Nina (presumably before she got him locked up in Hellgate) suggests he has already learned to love rather than hate once.
Themes
