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Chapter 21: Inej
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
Stepping back into Kaz’s memories, Kaz and Jordie ran out of the money from Mr. Hertzoon in a week. They discovered that the loan agreement was phony and got evicted from their boardinghouse. They slept on the streets. One morning, they discovered that Jordie had a fever, the beginnings of firepox. Kaz’s illness began a few days later. Kaz hallucinated due to the fever, and when he came to, Jordie was dead and cold. But Kaz couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move, so when men came to take bodies off the street, they took Kaz, too. He found himself on the Reaper’s Barge, where Ketterdam dumps poor folks’ bodies, but nobody could hear him shout for help. After 24 hours, Kaz decided he had to live and get revenge. Using Jordie’s body as a raft, he kicked back to Ketterdam and then let his brother’s body drift away.
Quickly, Kaz and Jordie’s life turned into a nightmare as they ran out of money and then became severely ill. And Kaz’s experience on the Reaper’s Barge, and of using Jordie’s body as a raft, helps explain why he can’t cope with being in the prison wagon with lots of prisoners in the novel’s present: he’s traumatized by this horrific experience. What kept Kaz alive then was his thirst for revenge on Mr. Hertzoon. While revenge still motivates him in the present, its target seems to have changed, suggesting, perhaps, more trauma in store for young Kaz.
Themes
In the present, Kaz comes to in the prison wagon, feeling as though he’s “drowning in corpses.” Inej’s voice helps him get ahold of himself, and she shares that they’ve made it past two checkpoints. Kaz is ashamed, but he’s glad that only Inej seems to have noticed that he fainted. The wagon then stops and guards lead the prisoners out of the wagon, remove prisoners’ hoods, and try to match the paperwork to the prisoners. Nina mutters that the prison must’ve been made by Fabrikators, and a guard hits her with his rifle. Kaz and Nina then notice members of Pekka Rollins’s crew impaled on spikes above them. None of the bodies seem to be Rollins’s. The guards finally finish arguing about the prisoners and lead them deeper into the prison.
This confirms that Kaz’s past trauma makes it difficult for him to function in the present: “drowning in corpses” is almost certainly a reference to the Reaper’s Barge. Note that while fainting makes perfect sense given the trauma Kaz experienced, he’s ashamed of it. This suggests that Kaz’s shame, as much as the trauma itself, keeps him from moving forward and seeking help. Seeing Rollins’s crew dead highlights the danger of this mission, as a better-funded crew than Kaz’s died.
Themes
After sorting the prisoners by gender, the guards lead prisoners past a chained Grisha woman who can identify other Grisha. She says nothing about Nina (paraffin on Nina’s arm acts as a shield), so Nina and Inej disappear from sight. Guards lead Kaz, Matthias, Jesper, Wylan, and the male prisoners around a glass enclosure with various weapons inside, including new inventions like tanks with a banner reading “Fjerdan Might” overhead. The glass is clearly Fabrikator bulletproof glass.
Fjerda clearly has a powerful military and impressive technology. However, as the Dregs identify at least some of the prison as being made by Fabrikators—Grisha, which Fjerda seeks to eliminate entirely—it suggests the country’s hypocrisy. It may hate Grisha, but it seems to only hate Grisha when they’re free (the chained Grisha woman shows that Fjerda has enslaved at least one Grisha).
Themes
Kaz tries not to vomit as the prisoners strip down and shower. Thinking of Jordie doesn’t help, but thinking of Inej’s voice does. He tries not to vomit again as a guard searches his mouth and finds two lockpicks, but not the baleen. Then, the male prisoners enter a holding cell. There, when another prisoner insults Kaz, Kaz dislocates his shoulder. This ensures that nobody will bother his crew—and Kaz remembers he’s not helpless.
Kaz’s focus is beginning to shift. Previously, getting revenge for Jordie’s death has motivated him. But now, his crush on Inej keeps him calm and moving forward, suggesting that a relationship with Inej might offer Kaz a way forward through his trauma.
Themes
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