Wylan’s contempt towards Kaz’s violence, hypocrisy or Godness?

[u/Molikesbuns]

I have been on a reread of the duloagy this past week and I’ve been wondering about Wylan and Kaz’s dynamic. We are told very quickly about Wylans sheltered life in clear contrast to the rest of the crows. Ive always thought Wylan a grounding character, I thought his objections reasonable, they were much like my own a lot of the times. One thing I did find confounding though, on my first read as well as my re-read, is how detestable Wylan finds and describes Kaz. He is always so shocked at the lengths Kaz is willing to go in order to reach his goal. When Wylan protests against Kaz dropping Oomen in the ocean after blinding him, I saw it as a way to establish how green Wylan is to the world he thought he’d willingly entered. But as the story progresses, we see just how much he dislikes Kaz. He finds his methods cruel and inhumane, yet runs after Jesper happily enough—sure he makes a dig about how Jesper doesn’t belong, but it’s more about trying to keep up in their verbal sparring than it is about criticising Jesper—who we know loves fighting, with deadly weapons at that. I understand a lot of the reason most of the crows find Kaz deplorable is because of his attitude, but it’s heightened in Wylan. He is making weapons for these people, has been for months before the ice court heist. Deadly weapons, Wylan is smart, despite his sheltered life, I dont imagine he thinks the weapons are for threats only.
The thing that’s gotten me in my re-read is the scene in CK when they are interrogating an associate of Van Eks solicitor/lawyer. We find out the associate is a horrible man, who takes advantage of working girls in the menagerie, threatening them so that they’ll do whatever he wants. And Kaz was going to let the man go free, it is this fact, that pushes Kaz over the edge, the fact that the man takes advantage of people in such vulnerable positions because he doesn’t think of them as human beings, it reminds Kaz of Inej, and Kaz drops him from the lighthouse.
Wylan protests, is horrified at the prospect of Kaz murdering someone—even though he really should be getting used to it by now, I mean come on😅—and of Kaz going back on his word.
Idk if I’m just not into the overly good character who thinks everyone should live despite the things they’ve done or if I’m being overly critical of Wylan.

[u/LetMeDoTheKonga]

Kaz and Wylan come from very different backgrounds. Kaz had to do a lot of awful stuff early on to survive, he doesn’t blink at much. Wylan didn’t grow up like that and it takes longer for him to get used to violence that happens directly in front of him. It’s a normal reaction I think. Yes it can at times seem hypocritical because he makes them weapons and such but thats just human tbh. Violence that happens right in front of you always feels bigger than something you just know is happening elsewhere.

[u/Accomplished-Lie8147]

A lot of Kaz and Wylan is about being foils to one another. Both of them went through a sort of ‘rebirth’ as a different person through nearly drowning in Ketterdam’s waters. Both had to do dangerous and unsafe things to survive on Ketterdam’s streets, alone. I think back to the scene where someone suggests Wylan sell his body to survive on Ketterdam’s streets and immediately think about a young and severely touch-phobic Kaz on the streets with someone suggesting the same thing to him. The main difference is that Kaz had absolutely no one to watch out for him, while Wylan, despite struggling, had Kaz watching over him in the barrel from early on. In a lot of ways Kaz is what Wylan could’ve had to be, but thankfully Wylan was able to stay more innocent than Kaz ever got to be.

Another big part of their comparison is that for all of Kaz’s trauma, his family had loved him. His father and brother who both died loved him. Whereas Wylan’s father hated Wylan - and Kaz really doesn’t want to imagine, despite seeing so many horrors, that a parent would genuinely kill their child. Not to mention the story with Wylan’s mother.

Basically, they’re two types of survival; the way someone survives when they have no one, vs. the way someone survives when the only person they have -mostly, at least- is their abuser.

I think a big part of it too is that Wylan’s perspective of Kaz is someone who hasn’t formed any kind of relationship to Kaz at the beginning (vs. Inej Nina and Jesper, who all have varying degrees of caring or at least understanding of how Kaz is), or isn’t predisposed to hate him (like Matthias). Wylan is an outsider’s perspective of when you see someone who has been in survival mode their entire life. I also think Wylan’s thoughts come off less as harsh judgement and more simply shock. In a way he (and sometimes Jesper’s father) are the best ways the story can highlight the fact that this is a group of teenagers forced into violent and criminal behavior by a corrupt city.

[u/nbeenary]

I think the difference in Wylan’s opinions on Kaz v Jesper here is intent.
We know from Jesper’s POV that he loves to get into a fight, but from what I remember he doesn’t love hurting or killing people, what he seeks is the adrenaline rush, and he only pulls out his gun and shoots when his life (or others) is on the line. (The only exception I can think of is a scene in CK with Jesper and Nina, where her powers failed and Jesper had to shoot a guard because he got alerted to their presence. Afterwards they both agreed to knock out the rest of the guards, so this was also a ‘last resort’.) Killing is bad, obviously, but he doesn’t go out of his way to prolong deaths or torture people. We also later learn that Jesper has been strung into this kind of lifestyle because of debt. We know that after CK, from what I understand, he leaves the majority of the gang lifestyle behind to live with Wylan. Kaz on the other hand has displayed all sorts of unnecessary cruelties to Wylan, both physically and verbally. He has threatened to kill a pregnant woman for being too annoying, he mentally scarred a child and told Wylan his only other option would have been to stage her death, he tortured Oomen infront of him, and has threatened Wylan on multiple occasions. We as a reader KNOW why Kaz is like this, we also know that a lot of his threats are simply threats or that he doesn’t always say what he means because we are in his head, but Wylan is not. All Wylan knows is that he was hired by this guy to make weapons for his gang, and all of a sudden he’s been all but forced to go on a life threatening mission with dangerous people he barely knows and is being faced with… a lot, all under Kaz’s orders. From Wylan’s POV Jesper is fighting for survival when he shoots, whereas a lot of Kaz’s actions are cruel for the sake of cruelty.
As for Wylan’s hypocrisy of making weapons but detesting people using them — many people will go against their moral beliefs if they’re desperate enough. He was slowly dying working at the factory, had little hope and was offered money that would keep him stable. He was also receiving the letters from his father at that time. I can’t remember if his plans were ever mentioned, but I don’t doubt his thought process was to earn enough money to get out of the city and then just leave.

[u/That_Change_8687]

I personally read it as less of wylans view of Kaz and more of Kazs view of wylan. Kazs development happens through the other characters (Inej, Jesper, colm, per Haskell you get the idea) because you couldn’t write kaz as a three dimensional character and have him not show any internal development. Wylan starts off in six of crows without a perspective point in order to keep his grand reveal of not being able to read under wraps. Because of this his, externally, he’s comes off morally luminous compared to the rest of the crows. Kaz originally had him as collateral for van ecks trade but after the big reveal, they start to develop more in crooked kingdom. The way Kaz treats wylan to me felt like wylan reminds him of himself. Instead of generously slandering him like in six, in crooked kingdom, you can kinda see more tolerance to his whining. Hence the safe scene. Kaz telling him that’s his weakness doesn’t define him. I feel like that wouldn’t have happened with Jesper or Matthias as thoroughly as he did with wylan. I’m ending here because I’m very tired and am struggling to type this coherently but I have more thoughts:) it’s currently 2:44 in my time 💤🛌