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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Inej’s High Wires
Inej’s high wires represent both her family and the confidence she has in her strength and her instincts, and they serve as a link to her past. She mastered tightrope walking because she had a natural talent for it and because she practiced diligently with the support of her family. She navigates the world with the same diligence and perseverance. She often relies on her own strength to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, such as surviving her enslavement in the Menagerie and fighting Dunyasha. When Inej is on the high wire, she describes the experience as a silence, stillness, and mastery that only she can understand. Known as the Wraith in the Barrel, Inej has taken the powers she gathered from the high wire and made them fundamental to her sense of self.
Kaz’s Boats
Boats are integral to Kaz’s life, both providing him with the means to escape danger and representing his journey away from fear and toward freedom. Kaz’s experience on the Reaper’s Barge is so traumatic that he becomes unable to touch other people’s flesh, as it reminds him of being surrounded by dead bodies. In a sense, then, Kaz spends his entire life running from the boat. However, when he falls in love with Inej, he yearns to be able to touch her and to be vulnerable with her. Though it’s painful, he struggles against the instincts he developed in response to the Reaper’s Barge to kiss Inej. At the end of their heist, Kaz constructs a corpse boat, and his team escapes by pretending to be dead bodies. This is both a reenactment of Kaz’s prior experience and a reversal of it: in building the boat and using it to gain freedom, Kaz reclaims the power that fear has had over him. What’s more, he gifts Inej a boat, which is a promise of closeness and intimacy. It’s telling that she brushes her hand against his when he gives it to her and he doesn’t flinch away. This steadfastness suggests that he is slowly overcoming his trauma and preparing to sail on Inej’s boat with her, toward a fuller life and away from death.
Wylan’s Flute
Wylan’s flute allows him to access his true self, a self he is unable to value because of his father’s constant denigration. Though Wylan can’t read, he possesses many talents, such as an aptitude for math and science and a facility with the flute. Because his father has been monomaniacally focused on his illiteracy, Wylan downplays these other talents. However, his flute means so much to him that, after his father attempts to have him killed, he refuses to drop his heavy satchel because he doesn’t want to lose it. The flute becomes a symbol of Wylan’s struggle to hold on to his identity in the face of his father’s brutalities. Indeed, as Wylan manages to swim to shore with the flute, it becomes clear that he has physical and emotional strengths that even he hadn’t been aware of. His flute also ties him to his beloved mother, who shares his love of art and music. When he sees his mother for the first time at Saint Hilde, he plays the flute for her. In the moment, while neither of them excels at communicating with words, something essential passes between them in the music. With his flute, Wylan finds ways to communicate without words, sharing his love of beauty and his personal truth.
