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
Jesper and Wylan sit anxiously on a bench, Matthias and Kaz across the cell from them. Jesper thinks of his father and wonders why Kaz is so worked up, but then Wylan starts hissing that the plan won’t work: Jesper is useless without his guns and Kaz doesn’t have his lockpicks. Jesper tries to get Wylan to say why he left home, but Wylan says only that Van Eck used to take him everywhere. Finally, the Elderclock chimes and a guard brings a bucket of water and asks for the piss bucket so he can empty it. The prisoners shrug, so the guard leaves. Jesper procures a pill that Nina sewed under the skin of his ankle and gives the signal for the crew to cover their faces. He puts the pill in the piss bucket, which creates a green gas and knocks out the other prisoners.
Once again, readers see the effect of Kaz not telling every member of the crew how things are going to play out. Wylan is more anxious than he needs to be, and he takes it out on Jesper, because he doesn’t believe Kaz is going to be able to get them out of the cell based on the information he does have (recall that guards found Kaz’s lockpicks in the previous chapter).
Themes
Jesper then begins working on the bars—he’s secretly a Fabrikator, though he’s barely trained. He creates two new lockpicks for Kaz, and Kaz explains that he gave up his picks earlier so the guards wouldn’t suspect Jesper or Matthias. Once the crew is out of the cell, they split up. Jesper and Matthias go to find rope, and Wylan and Kaz go to free Inej and Nina. Jesper shudders when he passes the enslaved Grisha woman at the prison entrance, collects rope, and he follows Matthias down to the basement. Wylan and Inej are already there—and the incinerator is hot, as though it ran recently. Jesper opens the doors and tosses a shirt down, and the shirt burns up before it hits the coals. They can’t take explosives in there, and Inej is uncertain if she can climb it.
As usual, Kaz has a plan. He expects everyone to trust that he has everything figured out, but as Wylan’s anxiety in the previous passage showed, this leads to angst among the crewmembers. Here, the hot incinerator presents a new problem, one that it’s not clear how Kaz will solve—or indeed, how or if Inej can overcome it. The burning shirt is a dire warning that any mistakes will not be survivable.
Themes
To make matters worse, for some reason, Kaz has gone with Nina to search the cells instead of Jesper and Matthias. But then, Wylan finds Inej’s leather slippers in a bin of clothing, and Inej smiles. With them, she says she can climb the incinerator.
Inej’s slippers help her feel more like herself. And as she’s reminded of who she is—the Wraith, who can climb anything—she suddenly knows she can prevail. That Wylan finds the slippers, meanwhile, highlights the importance of friendship and teamwork.
Themes
