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Chapter Twenty-Five
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Systems of Oppression
Cycles of Violence
Tradition and History
Love vs. Duty
Summary
Analysis
In the evening, Inan decides to sneak out and figure out where the Iyika camp is. He covers his white streak in his hair, dresses in simple clothes, and feels haunted by Raifa’s threats. Ojore interrupts and teases Inan about meeting a girl, but he grows somber when Inan shares that he’s going to find the Iyika. Ojore takes off his breastplate and insists on going too. It takes them an hour to sneak out of Lagos. Inan repeats that if they can find the Iyika, Nehanda can take care of them. He reaches for his power, but it burns him. Ojore watches with disdain.
The fact that Ojore cannot get over that Inan, one of his best friends, has access to magic—even if it literally causes Inan pain—speaks to the success of the previous monarchs’ messaging that maji and magic are evil and bad. Ojore is unable to separate the thing he hates from the person he loves, and so is more likely to betray Inan or push Inan to do things that Inan doesn’t want to do.
Themes
They hear a rustle in the bushes. It’s just an animal, but Ojore trembles and then turns away in shame. In a pained voice, he says he doesn’t know why the Iyika attacked with Burners when they have Reapers and Cancers too. Inan looks at Ojore’s burns and sees how much pain he’s in, but a look of hatred comes over Ojore’s face and they push on. After another hour, they find the Iyika camp. There are only nine rebels. Ojore and Inan turn to head back, but two Burners order them to drop their swords. When one Burner suggests they send Inan’s head to the elders, Ojore spins into life. He kills two Burners as another creates a wall of fire. Magic swells in Inan and bursts out of his body. The force breaks bones in his arm.
Again, Ojore is dealing with intense trauma as a result of what his parents experienced—and unlike Reapers and Cancers, whose powers manifest in ways distinctly supernatural in the novel, Burners control fire, which exists and can be scary even in the reader’s world. The Burners, in essence, have turned something that should be normal into a terrifying trigger for Ojore, which is one of the reasons he hates magic so much: he can’t even get through the day-to-day without fear.
Themes
