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
As the alarms blare, Jesper fidgets in the laundry room. Inej, Wylan, and Matthias are already on the roof, and Jesper has cleaned up the laundry room. He’s just waiting for Nina and Kaz now: they’re late. Nina appears alone, unsure of where Kaz is, and climbs up the rope in the incinerator. Just as Jesper is about to climb up after her, Kaz appears, covered in blood. They climb onto the roof. There, all the boys join Inej and Nina, who are already over on the embassy roof huddling by a skylight. Nina is trying to get the melted rubber off of Inej’s feet, and Kaz barks for Jesper to do it, revealing to Nina that Jesper is a Fabrikator in the process.
While Kaz firmly insists on keeping his own secrets, he extends his crew no such luxuries—here, he forces Jesper to reveal that he’s a Fabrikator, something that Jesper has been very careful about keeping quiet. This highlights Kaz’s power, his hypocrisy, and his unwillingness to respect anyone else’s wishes if he doesn’t find those desires convenient.
Themes
Nina explains how she ended up triggering the alarm, and then Kaz explains that he was late because he went looking for Pekka Rollins—but he says he didn’t find him, and the blood on his shirt belonged to a guard. Jesper doesn’t believe him. By now, Inej’s feet are healed enough so she can walk, so the crew argues about how to try to get onto the White Island—and whether they should even try. Due to the alarm at the prison, they see that the Fjerdans are adding another checkpoint, making getting in or out an even harder proposition. But Inej points to two groups coming through the gatehouse and says that she and Nina, at least, can get in—with the Menagerie. She says it like she’s facing a firing squad.
Kaz begins to open up to the crew, but readers know he’s lying about not having found Rollins (Kaz found him at the end of the previous chapter). He still has a long way to go to being truly open and honest with the crew. Inej, meanwhile, already shows signs that she’s beginning to heal from her past trauma. Readers have already seen how traumatized she was by her time at the Menagerie, so her willingness to suggest sneaking in with the Menagerie girls implies that she feels more powerful and in control after her incinerator climb.
Themes
