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Chapter Forty
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Children of Blood and Bone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Prejudice and Inequality
Duty to Family vs. Self
Faith and Tradition
Cycles of Violence
Summary
Analysis
Inan grabs Zélie’s hand and feels magic thrumming in his skin. Now that he’s seen her past, he can’t take his eyes off of Zélie. He suddenly knows he cannot be a king like his father, Saran. His father is everything he doesn’t want to be.
Inan’s new awareness of Zélie’s experiences has given him a deep sense of empathy and powerfully reshaped how he sees the world and his role in it. He realizes that he does not want to cause the pain that his father caused, and, for the first time, sees that he can choose another path.
Themes
Inan tells Zélie they have to work together to save their siblings. Zélie does not want to trust him, but he points out that she has no choice. Zélie lifts the bloodied, masked boy and Inan asks again where their siblings have been taken.
Zélie is conflicted. She wants to protect her family, and reasonably, sees Inan as a threat to herself and her family. But because their interests are temporarily aligned, working with Inan may actually be the best way to fulfil her responsibility to protect her family.
Themes
