67 pages • 2 hours read
Leigh BardugoCrooked Kingdom: A Sequel to Six of Crows
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Jurda Parem
Jurda parem symbolizes greed for wealth and power. Originally, Kuwei and his father sought to develop a chemical to protect Grisha’s health and anonymity. Their government valued profit and power over human lives and turned their invention into a deadly drug that forces Grisha into servitude. The Shu compel parem-dosed Fabrikators to turn lead into gold and to develop soldiers with superhuman abilities. Besides facilitating such oppression, the drug also deepens the divisions between countries. Other nations recognize the economic and military power they stand to gain by acquiring the secret of parem and converge on Ketterdam. The threat of war hangs over the city, showing that greed for wealth and power motivates human conflict on the world stage.
Greed also corrupts people on the individual level. Kaz tricks Van Eck and the other members of the Kerch Merchant Council into investing millions in a fictitious jurda consortium by using their insatiable greed against them. The Merchant Council already enjoys great prosperity and influence, but individuals ruled by avarice can always justify wanting more. However, not everyone can be bought. Kaz’s crew help Kuwei escape to Ravka and protect the world’s Grisha from the spread of parem even when they believe that Kaz sacrificed their fortunes to incriminate Van Eck. Although their enemies disparage the Dregs as lowlifes and thieves, these young people do not succumb to greed the way that their “betters” do because they know that human dignity and freedom are priceless.
No Mourners, No Funerals
The motif “No mourners, no funerals” develops the theme of The Search for Home and Family. The expression’s call-and-response format makes it participatory and inclusive by design, which enhances the sense of belonging and family it fosters. The phrase essentially means “good luck or be safe” (27), but it also carries a grim reminder for the Dregs. The words are “a dark wink to the fact that there would be no expensive burials for people like them, no marble markers to remember their names” (266). In the brutal, wealth-worshiping city of Ketterdam, only the rich receive proper funerals. The city’s bodymen cremate everyone else without ceremony on the Reaper’s Barge. Thus, the phrase “No mourners, no funerals” reminds the Dregs that they will have no monuments besides each other’s memories. This motif enhances the novel’s suspense because the Dregs invoke the phrase when they anticipate danger, such as when they disperse to prepare for the hostage exchange.
The words take on additional layers of meaning as the novel progresses and the characters’ relationships deepen. Before Wylan leaves Black Veil Island to break into his father’s safe, he and Jesper discuss what they intend to do after they make their fortunes. The boys struggle to articulate their mutual hope of building a future together, but the phrase “No mourners, no funerals” allows them to express their concern and care for one another before they part.
Of course, the chant is not a magic charm that can protect the Dregs, and the motif achieves its greatest poignancy with Matthias’s death. Jesper leads the call and is “surprised by the ache of tears in his throat” (510). The Dregs mourn their fallen friend and lay red tulips from Van Eck’s garden on his body, and Nina promises to give Matthias a proper Fjerdan burial. The Dregs’ actions contradict the words “No mourners, no funerals” on the literal level, but they hold true to the expression’s deeper meaning: The members of the crew are family despite and because of their losses. The words unite them in the pain of that grief while also expressing a defiant determination not to lose anyone else.
Pigeons and Crows
Bird symbolism appears throughout the novel, with pigeons representing gullibility (bordering on willful ignorance) and crows signifying remembrance. Near the novel’s beginning, Kaz has the details of the Merchant Council’s legal and financial dealings at his fingertips. He comments, “So many pigeons” (25). Even with his focus on rescuing Inej, Kaz automatically assesses people’s weaknesses as potential targets. Later in the novel, pigeon symbolism develops the similarities between Kaz and his nemesis and foil, Pekka Rollins. Rollins’s alias as Jakob Hertzoon parallels Kaz’s invention of Johannus Rietveld, a “respectable identity […] to better dupe gullible pigeons” (356).
As the similarities between Rollins and Kaz demonstrate, pigeons and crows defy the tidy, simplistic categories of innocent victims and wicked villains. The novel’s protagonist is both a pigeon (the young boy Kaz Rieveld who lost everything to one of Rollins’s cons) and the ultimate crow (the relentless Dirtyhands feared throughout the Barrel).
Ultimately, remembrance separates Kaz from Rollins. When Inej asks Kaz why he chose a crow-headed cane, he explains that crows recognize human faces: “They remember the people who feed them, who are kind to them. And the people who wrong them too” (528). Unlike Rollins, Kaz wants more than to make a fortune plucking pigeons. Kaz’s memories of the times he was wronged define him, and Rollins fails to lure him from the path of revenge with promises of wealth because Kaz is “hungrier for vengeance than for gold” (536). For a time, his crew believes that their haul vanished into the Shu’s coffers. Kaz could have kept the money for himself instead of sharing it evenly among them, but as a crow, he remembers his friends’ kindnesses and looks out for his flock. The novel’s bird symbolism illustrates both the parallels and vital differences between the novel’s protagonist and antagonist.
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By Leigh Bardugo
