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
Two days after Inej wakes up, Kaz finally works up the courage to approach her. But rather than ask how she is, he shows her Wylan’s elevation drawing of the prison and asks if she can climb the incinerator chimney. Inej asks why he’s even asking—she can and will do it. Privately, Kaz thinks he just needed an excuse to talk to her. But they snappily discuss how neither of them likes that there’s only one route out of the Ice Court. Kaz finds himself wanting Inej to say she knows he can pull this job off. However, his demeanor changes entirely when she brings up Pekka Rollins. He shares that Pekka Rollins killed his brother. Inej promises to pray for Kaz’s brother, but Kaz doesn’t want prayers. He wants Inej, but he keeps this thought to himself. Aloud, he tells her he just wants to die rich.
This passage confirms that Kaz, on some level, understands that he’s harming his relationship with Inej by refusing to speak openly to her about his feelings. Bringing up the incinerator shaft makes Inej feel like she only matters to him for her climbing abilities, yet Kaz’s inner monologue makes it clear that he has a crush on her. It’s perhaps progress that he decides to tell Inej that Rollins killed Jordie, but, as usual, Kaz remains focused on his greed and keeps most of his true feelings inside, further alienating Inej.
Themes
Kaz limps away from Inej, upset with her and with himself. Bringing up Jordie to her has brought up all the memories. After their father died in a plowing accident when Kaz was nine and Jordie 13, Jordie sold the farm, and the siblings traveled to Ketterdam. Jordie planned to get a job with merchers, but he soon found that nobody wanted to hire from outside of their circles. One day, though, a boy named Filip told Jordie he had a connection, and the next day, Jordie had a job with a man named Jakob Hertzoon. While Jordie worked, Kaz could sit at Mr. Hertzoon’s coffee house and practice magic tricks. They had dinner with the Hertzoon family, and Jordie even invested in company stocks.
This flashback allows readers to learn how Kaz came to be the person he is in the present. At first, despite the tragedy of the boys’ father’s death, things seem idyllic: Jakob Hertzoon seems to save the boys and give them a meaningful and comfortable lifestyle. It also highlights that Kaz hasn’t always been a part of society’s underbelly: Jordie wants to work for merchers, people whose jobs are legal and socially acceptable.
Themes
Soon after, Mr. Hertzoon got word that the price of sugar was going to spike, so he purchased as much as he could and paid Jordie and Filip handsomely when the earnings came in. Not long after, the same thing seemed likely to happen with jurda—but this time, Jordie convinced Mr. Hertzoon to let him invest the proceeds from his father’s farm. Kaz will always remember the moment he saw Jordie overcome with greed. Jordie finally convinced Mr. Hertzoon. Due to his being a minor, Jordie lent Mr. Hertzoon the money to invest on his behalf, and they drew up a contract. But when Jordie and Kaz returned to the Hertzoon house a week later to collect, it was empty—and the neighbors told them the Hertzoons only rented the house a few weeks ago. To Kaz, Mr. Hertzoon’s disappearance seemed like a magic trick.
Mr. Hertzoon, it seems, draws Jordie in, earns his trust, and then runs off with the boys’ entire savings. While Kaz is already interested in magic tricks at this point, it’s certainly no accident that he thinks of Mr. Hertzoon’s disappearance as a magic trick—or that Kaz will one day trick people much like Mr. Hertzoon tricked Jordie. Kaz perhaps learns that there’s way more power in doing things shadily, even as he recognizes the harm that tricking people like this causes.
Themes
