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 tries not to panic, hoping that her awful appearance in the ship’s hold when Brum saw her last will give her cover now. Flirting with Brum, she brings up Grisha, pretending she’d like to see one and internally flinching when he calls them “deceitful witches.” He offers to show her a Grisha, and Nina takes his arm. They walk outside and Nina considers killing Brum, but he’s her only ticket to Bo Yul-Bayur. They’re in a courtyard, and Nina recognizes the huge tree in the middle: the sacred ash. Brum briefly describes the drüskelles’ initiation ceremony to Nina, and Nina realizes she blames Brum for hunting Grisha and for corrupting innocent boys like Matthias by teaching them to hate.
Nina takes matters into her own hands and works to manipulate Brum, but this is still a terrifying—and painful—experience. She still has to listen to Brum say horrible things about Grisha, and she is again reminded of how much of a corrupting influence Brum has been not just on Matthias, but on other young Fjerdan boys and men like him. He’s inflicting trauma on those boys by training them to fear and hate people who are different, and as Matthias’s difficult journey shows, recovering from and moving beyond that trauma is exceedingly difficult.
Themes
By now, Brum has led Nina around the courtyard to the treasury, where he insists she’ll get her “thrill.” Nina suddenly realizes how much danger she’s in: Brum is the most dangerous man here, and can Kaz really get her out of here? The light inside the treasury is harsh, with no candles or anything for Grisha to manipulate. Brum explains that this building is actually a laboratory now. He stops in front of a door with a window; inside is a Grisha boy who looks ill to Nina. The girl in the next cell looks sick as well, and Brum offers to press a button and give Nina a “show.” Nina figures it’ll give the girl jurda parem, so she tries to get Brum to show her more. Bo Yul-Bayur has to be here; Nina just has to incapacitate Brum. She suggests they find a quiet spot.
It's not entirely clear to Nina if she can trust herself, Kaz, or Brum and make it through this tense situation. And as she views the captive and drugged Grisha in the cells, Nina has no choice but to face what could very well happen to her should things go south. Brum’s offer of a “show” is extremely sinister. It shows that he views the Grisha as fun playthings, even though they’re real people he’s torturing.
Themes
Brum leads Nina to a doorway and Nina enters, expecting an office—but it’s an empty cell, and the door closes behind her. Smugly, Brum says he recognizes Nina, and he threatens to dose her with the gaseous form of jurda parem. But then, he says it’s actually Matthias’s right to do so, and Matthias’s face appears in the window. He snarls that he warned Brum about Nina’s presence here tonight straight away, and he insists he believes in “[c]ountry before self.” He coldly welcomes Nina to the Ice Court as the Black Protocol bells go off.
In a horrifying twist, Brum and Matthias capture Nina. This suggests that Matthias was playing Kaz and Nina all along and that Brum brainwashed him well enough to guarantee his loyalty now that Matthias has made his way back to Fjerda. If this is true, and if Matthias isn’t also acting, it would suggest that friendship and love perhaps aren’t powerful enough to overcome fear and hatred.
Themes
