86 pages • 2 hours read
Leigh BardugoSix of Crows
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Search for Home
The six main characters of Six of Crows are all outcasts who have either chosen to leave or been forced out of their childhood homes. Coming from disparate backgrounds, these characters are united by the fact they’ve had to fend for themselves, to survive on their own as teenagers in a cruel adult world. Throughout the novel, the protagonists struggle in different ways to either find a way to return home—or accept the fact they can never do so. In the end, they must redefine the concept of “home” altogether.
Kaz Brekker, the central character who brings together this crew of misfits, claims to have no home or family, proudly calling himself the “the bastard of the Barrel” (303). As the novel continues, readers learn that Kaz did have a home in Kerch, until his father and older brother both died, leaving Kaz alone in the dangerous Barrel district. Of all the characters, Kaz is perhaps most vehement in his rejection of the concept of home: He takes on a fake last name to hide any traces of his old identity and rids himself of all traces of empathy, transforming himself into the “monster” Dirtyhands. Even as Dirtyhands, Kaz holds onto his love for his brother and hopes to punish those who caused his brother’s death. Though he might not want to admit it, Kaz does understand the importance of home and family, and he uses that knowledge to motivate the rest of his crew.
Kaz specifically uses the concept of home to entice Matthias, a Fjerdan guided by “honor” to join a gang of criminals he would otherwise avoid. Kaz promises Matthias a pardon that will allow him to return to his drüskelle community in Fjerda, and Matthias wants to return to his home so badly that “the longing for it twisted in his chest” (115). Nina, a Grisha from Ravka, also desperately wants to go back to her home and her people, with a desire so great it’s “a physical ache” (299). When Matthias does return to his homeland during the Dregs’ mission, he finds that coming home is not so simple as he expected: The Ice Court seems to be “home turned on its head, his life viewed at the wrong angle” (343). Similarly, Nina realizes that her desire to be with Matthias is as great as her loyalty to the Ravkan Grisha. At the end of the novel, Matthias suggests that if Nina wants to return to Ravka, they should do so together.
Like Matthias and Nina, Inej lost her homeland through an act of violence, when she was kidnapped by slavers and sold to a brothel in Ketterdam. While Inej lived in Ravka, her Suli family were nomads for whom “‘home’ really just meant family” (265). Inej longs to see her family again, but at the same time she can’t “bear the thought of returning,” as she doubts she’ll be “forgiven” for the person she’s become since being sold to a pleasure house. Because of the violence, greed, and hatred in her world, Inej, like Nina and Matthias, must find a new sense of home and purpose. She conceives of a different life for herself, one in which she hunts down slavers and seeks vengeance for others who have been taken from their families and homes.
Unlike Nina, Matthias, and Inej, the two remaining members of Kaz’s crew chose to leave homes where they didn’t belong. Jesper wasn’t satisfied by the “wide open spaces and silence” of his country home (192), and he moved to Ketterdam hoping a university education would stimulate his restless mind, but he found that gambling did so even more. Wylan driven out of a wealthy home by a father who couldn’t accept the fact that his son couldn’t read. He searches for a new home among the Dregs and finds one through the others’ respect and acceptance—and through a budding romance with Jesper.
By the end of Six of Crows, the members of Kaz’s mission find their status as outcasts has actually “bound them together” (332)—they are united by their loss of family, by the fact that “if one or all of them disappeared tonight, on one would come looking” (332). Ultimately, the characters’ ability to survive the loss of home, and the loss of the security home and family provides, has drawn them together despite their vastly different backgrounds. Home can be found in shared experience and purpose as much as it can be found in a place or a biological relationship.
Vengeance
Kaz’s overwhelming desire to seek revenge for his brother’s death sets the novel’s entire plot into motion. The thirst for vengeance can drive a person away from their true nature, destroying both of themselves and others around them. For characters like Kaz and Matthias, redemption comes not through revenge but through stronger relationships with the people for whom they care. At the same time, a different sort of vengeance can become a noble purpose, as it does for Inej by the end of the novel.
Kaz’s criminal persona, Dirtyhands, grows out of his anger at those who have wronged him and his brother. In order to exact vengeance—to make those who wronged him and his brother pay—Kaz transforms himself into a monster willing to harm innocents and act solely in self-interest. He has no qualms about recruiting five other teenagers, including Inej, the girl for whom he cares most, for what is likely a suicide mission—so long as that mission takes down his worst enemy. Another member of the crew Kaz recruits for this suicide mission, Matthias, is also motivated by vengeance in a way that brings out his worst aspects. Matthias aligns with a “demon’s crew,” giving up the sacred secrets of his homeland for the chance to “run Nina Zenik to ground and make her pay in every way imaginable” (116).
As Kaz and Matthias grow closer to Inej and Nina, respectively, they find that feelings of love and loyalty begin to trump the desire for revenge. When Inej nearly dies fending off an ambush meant to sabotage the mission, Kaz tries to remind himself of his goals: “Money. Vengeance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever” (205). As the mission continues, Kaz finds that instead of revenge, “all he [can] think of [is] Inej” (403). Unlike the desire for vengeance, which leaves Kaz willing to sacrifice both friends and enemies, love for Inej makes Kaz want to better himself, to “pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her” (403).
Mattias finds that the more he spends time with Nina, the more he questions his desire for revenge. At one point, Matthias must pretend to imprison Nina, to trick an enemy into believing they’re on the same side. He is acting out a scene he’d dreamed of— “he had longed to see her made captive, punished as he had been punished” (381)—yet he finds the act only brings him pain. Matthias realizes that seeking revenge would make him a monster, so he forgives Nina and lets his love for her drive his actions in the remainder of the novel.
What Makes a Monster
Near the end of Six of Crows, Matthias tells Nina, “We are all someone’s monster” (427). Throughout the novel, characters become monstrous, either willingly, as Kaz does, or because others see them as terribly inhuman. Only an acknowledgment of shared humanity can reveal the person beneath the monstrous mask.
Monstrosity appears early on in the novel, when Inej thinks that Kaz has become the “monster” Dirtyhands in order “to see the rough work done” (32). Kaz embraces his monstrous reputation, telling Inej, “When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing” (38), and he welcomes the rumors that he has “claws and not fingers” (58) underneath his ever-present gloves. Matthias refers to Kaz as “demjin,” or demon, throughout the book, underscoring Kaz’s perceived inhumanity. By the end of the novel, Kaz must choose whether to embrace his human or monstrous side. Although love for Inej has brought out his humanity, as Kaz hopes to become “some semblance of a man” for Inej (403), he must once again don his Dirtyhands persona to rescue her after she is kidnapped.
Although Kaz may have earned the title of demjin through his actions, other characters inherited their identity as monsters. Nina remarks that over countless years, “Grisha had come to be viewed as monsters by the Fjerdans” (357); Nina, a Grisha with magical powers, becomes a “witch” an “abomination,” but most of all, a “monster” in the eyes of the Fjerdan Matthias. Nina sees the Fjerdan drüskelle like Matthias, who hunt and execute Grisha, as cruel, monstrous hunters. Nina’s attitude is exemplified by her characterization of the drüskelle’s leader Jarl Brum, whom she describes as a “monster waiting in the dark” (168). Matthias reveals to Nina that Grisha slaughtered his family during a raid, and Nina comes to understand how Grisha could be monstrous in his eyes. Yet she finds it equally disturbing to learn Matthias “think[s] of that monster Brum as some kind of father figure” (236), since Brum took Matthias in after the massacre.
The definition of “monster” shifts based on who is doing the defining; by the end of the novel, the characters actively resist viewing each other as monsters, seeing each other’s humanity instead. While the Grisha may have inhuman, demonic-seeming powers, they are humans “like anyone else—full of the potential to do great good, and also great harm” (383). Monstrosity is defined less by one’s nature and more by one’s actions.
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