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
Inej wakes up slowly, realizes she’s on the Ferolind, and suddenly feels how much everything hurts. Nina jerks awake when Inej says her name, and she helps Inej drink water. She agrees to wait to tell Kaz that Inej is awake and, when Inej asks, explains that Pekka Rollins ambushed them at the harbor and that Kaz killed Oomen—and many others. Inej shares what Kaz said about her being a good “investment” (which enrages Nina), and then Nina agrees to talk instead of forcing Inej to rest. They discuss how Inej had her Menagerie tattoo removed by a “butcher” in the Barrel, and that Kaz told Inej she didn’t have to take the Dregs tattoo because he didn’t want to “mark” her. Privately, Inej knows Kaz has left his mark on her anyway, since she cares for him. But he gave her a life as the Wraith.
Satisfyingly for Inej, her friends in the Dregs also take issue with Kaz’s casual cruelty. Nina’s anger that Kaz would talk about Inej as an investment suggests that Inej does have support in the Dregs—but not from Kaz, or at least not in the way she’d like to. As they discuss Inej’s tattoos, Inej suggests that the most important thing to her is being in control of her own body. This means getting to choose a “butcher” to remove the Menagerie tattoo and choosing not to take the crow and cup of the Dregs.
Themes
Inej and Nina discuss that they both have bad memories of being on boats, so they sing a Kerch drinking song. Inej was 14 when she was kidnapped out of her family’s caravan on the West Ravkan coast, where her family had been setting up for a show. She was tossed in the hold with other kidnapped children. They were bound for a Kerch island known for its slave auctions—though slavery is technically illegal in Kerch. On the island, Tante Heleen was there to inspect Inej from head to toe. Now, Inej wonders if even the person she is today would’ve been brave enough to throw herself into the ocean; she froze when Tante Heleen grabbed her just days ago.
Here, Inej seems to experience an identity crisis as she considers her past experience of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. She was an innocent and seemingly powerless girl then—and she seems to wonder if she’s still as powerless, even if she’s now the Wraith, a deadly killer. Inej has, in this regard, not yet overcome her trauma: it still influences her behavior today, and not for the better.
Themes
