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 follows Kaz up the prison stairs, figuring he insisted on joining her for time reasons or just to keep the others guessing. Evading guards, they reach the top floor and split up. The cells that Nina searches are strange, with steel doors and a viewing grate. Bo Yul-Bayur isn’t in any of them. Finally, Nina reaches the final corridor, which feels strange. It’s lit harshly and all surfaces are clean white. Fabrikator glass makes up the viewing window of every cell, and every cell is just empty with a drain in the floor. On the floor of one cell, Nina notices a Grisha Squaller’s Kefta button, and she realizes that these cells are for Grisha. Nina leaves the corridor immediately, terrified. She spent so much time studying Fjerda, but now, she just wants to go back to Ketterdam.
It's cruelly ironic that the very cells in which Fjerda holds Grisha were clearly created by Grisha, likely enslaved Grisha. This confirms that Fjerda is hypocritical about how they view Grisha: they simply don’t want them to be free and instead, they want to use Grisha for their own gain. Nina finds that actually experiencing Fjerda isn’t at all the same as studying it in school. This works to symbolically suggest that being an adult—experiencing problems firsthand—is different, and more difficult, than being a young, sheltered child. Nina is growing up, and here, she experiences growing pains.
Themes
Nina is late getting back to the landing, but Kaz isn’t there. She hurries through the corridors Kaz was supposed to search, but she can’t find him. As she heads down the stairs, she encounters two guards and sends them tumbling down the stairs, but one guard’s rifle goes off as he hits each step. Nina kills him, and the Elderclock begins to sound an alarm.
It's notable that Nina is the one to set off the alarms after mostly following Kaz’s instructions—in this situation, he seems to be the one dropping the ball. This suggests that his crew may not be able to rely on him like they’ve so far thought they could.
Themes
