Dreams

Inej Ghafa was sold into sexual slavery at a young age. She’s since become a legendary pirate that tracks and dismantles slave ships across the seas because she has a dream for retribution and her own repentance, for goodness. It is what drives her in Six of Crows because, “[s]he wanted a storm—thunder, wind, a deluge. She wanted it to crash through Ketterdam’s pleasure houses, lifting roofs and tearing doors of their hinges…. I want to call that storm, she thought…. She would hunt the slavers and their buyers” (Bardugo 311). That dream kept her alive. It provided her with a purpose. And to dream of something with visceral devotion, to be magnetized by some person, or hope, or object, that is a heart with purpose.

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Through Inej, “Bardugo shows the reader how healthy motivations can become a positive source of change” (Keus 136). Despite her traumas and fears, the notion that the future is never certain is exactly what propels her towards her dream. Similar to muscle growth, “…being comfortable leads to complacency” (Amyx 88). Even Epictetus, a Greek stoic philosopher once said, “We suffer not from the events in our lives, but from our judgement about them.” If Inej would have stayed stagnant, remaining as Kaz Brekker’s right hand in Ketterdam, she would not have achieved her dream for retribution.

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In the same way, if we do not dare to strive for our dreams, however improbable, we find ourselves stagnant. The world can be an incredibly cruel place, but dreams give us hope to continue.

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