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, Matthias, Kuwei, and Kaz—who’s unconscious—emerge from the river. Nina performs CPR and uses her power to make Kaz’s heart beat until finally, Kaz shoves her away, coughs up water, and gasps. Ignoring Matthias’s snarls that Kaz destroyed the sacred ash, Kaz gets up and leads the group out of the gorge to the road, asking why Bo Yul-Bayur looks like one of “Wylan’s school pals.” As they reach the road, they hear a rumbling coming closer, and a tank with Inej and Wylan in the turret screeches to a stop next to them. The Fjerdans are driving their own tanks down the road, but Jesper shoots down the trestle bridge over the gorge. Now, the Fjerdans can’t reach them. The entire crew grabs onto the tank as Jesper drives it through Djerholm’s warehouse district to the harbor.
Finally, the last parts of the plan come into focus for readers: the tank is everyone’s way out of Djerholm. The crew’s success again suggests the power of friendship, working together, and using each team member’s strengths to support other people’s weaknesses. Just as Nina saves Kaz because she has the unique power as a Grisha to do so, Wylan put the screwdriver together when it’s implied nobody else could do so.
Themes
But just as the crew gets their first view of the sea, Jesper stops the tank: hundreds of troops stand in the quay, pointing guns at the tank. They demand that the crew releases Kuwei and surrender. As the Fjerdans drag out an emaciated Heartrender who’s clearly begging for jurda parem, Inej points out the Ferolind in the harbor. Kaz admits he has no plan, and Wylan and Inej agree that they won’t let the Fjerdans take them.
Unusually for Kaz, he didn’t see this coming. The Fjerdans’ Heartrender highlights Brum’s earlier insistence that jurda parem turns Grisha into “obedient weapons”; the Heartrender seems not to care what side they’re supporting, just that they get their next fix.
Themes
But as Matthias agrees with the others that they “end this here,” Nina whispers to Kuwei in Shu, and he gives her a leather pouch containing a powder. Matthias argues, but Nina says some people aren’t addicted until the second dose. Telling Matthias to kill her if it gets bad, Nina takes the jurda parem. Suddenly, she can see everything and hear every Fjerdan soldiers’ heartbeat. She can see every element of their brains and knows when the Heartrender takes his dose of parem.
Nina sacrifices herself by taking jurda parem, which she seems to hope will allow her to best the Heartrender and save her friends. This highlights her loyalty and her values: it’s important to her to keep her friends (and herself) out of the Fjerdans’ custody.
Themes
