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Chapter 34: Nina
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
Brum compliments Matthias’s strength: he wasn’t “lured” in by Nina’s beauty. He encourages Matthias to dose Nina with the jurda parem, explaining that it’s mixed with a sedative that makes Grisha “biddable” by the second dose, at most. Matthias asks about Bo Yul-Bayur, whom Brum confirms is still alive. Then, Brum assures Matthias that he’s safe now and leads him past the dozens of Grisha cells. He shocks Matthias when he explains that while he’s only known about jurda parem for a short while, this facility has been around for 15 years; Fjerda uses the Grisha as a “resource” after their trials. They’re “a blight on the natural world” when they’re out on their own, but Grisha are meant to be “weapons,” and jurda parem makes them obedient weapons.
Brum confirms for Matthias and for readers what Nina has suspected since arriving at the Ice Court: Fjerda uses Grisha as an enslaved labor force to create their advanced military technology and infrastructure. The way he talks about Grisha as being dangerous and unfit to dictate the course of their own lives is paternalistic and condescending, and it speaks to just how little Brum thinks of Grisha. He doesn’t see them as fully realized human beings, just with exceptional powers: they’re animals, or inanimate objects (“weapons”).
Themes
Matthias notes that Nina spent a year trying to secure his freedom in Kerch, so she doesn’t seem like a monster, but Brum insists that lots of animals can trick people before they strike. Matthias considers. He’s wanted to see Nina locked up and punished like he was—but this hurts him. He gets Brum to talk some more, about Yul-Bayur, who’s apparently still grieving his father. Brum shows Matthias the key around his neck and promises to reinstate Matthias as a drüskelle tomorrow. Matthias is conflicted, but he knows what he must do. So as he turns to embrace Brum, he thinks of the drüskelle cause, which he learned in the past year is a lie. Nina saved him, buried her friends, and proved herself generous and human. Matthias embraces Brum in a way that cuts off his air, and Brum passes out.
In this moment, Matthias finally makes his choice. He’s seen who Brum is: a heartless monster who manipulates and exploits others. And he’s also spent the last year seeing firsthand how loving and kind Nina is. This, Matthias decides, makes Nina more human than Brum, and thus worth saving (though it’s implied that Matthias has always planned to trick Brum and save Nina, so he hasn’t only just now made that realization).
Themes
Earlier, when Matthias and Kaz were in the ballroom, Matthias had noticed Brum following Nina and insisted on going to help her. He intercepted Brum and told him about assassins in attendance, offering information on how to stop them. Matthias told Brum a cursory version of what happened in the last year and that Nina believed Matthias was going to escort her over the secret bridge. Now, in the present, Matthias realizes that Brum took pleasure in torturing Grisha, something Matthias never did. He props Brum up in an empty cell, tells his unconscious mentor that his hate for Grisha is “poison” that he won’t consume anymore, and hurries to rescue Nina.
As Matthias chooses to rescue Nina and renounces the drüskelle causes, he completes his coming of age journey. It’s telling that the final thing that turns Matthias away from Brum is Brum’s pleasure in causing other people harm. This points to Matthias’s goodness and his empathy—it’s one thing to hurt others for a just cause, but it’s another to torture people just for fun.
Themes
