Children as property
The novel is predicated on one simple idea which serves the entire book as the inciting idea of the text: Instead of treating other people as people, the evil cast of this novel treats a child as human property. There is always a tendency among the rich and powerful to use poor people as property, whether in ancient Egypt where the poor were forced into manual labor, or in modern day human trafficking. The irony should be quite apparent; children are people, and people should be treated as if their existence is supremely valuable. Treating anyone as an object betrays them, and for this Jucas joins Judas as traitor.
The son's survival as drama
The mother endures a horrific drama by not knowing for a long time what will become of her son. While he was there in front of her, his survival was concrete, but now he has been taken away, into the dark, left under the control of not just any person, but the kind of person who is willing to kidnap a child. The horror is abstract, because she uses her imagination to weight the true danger of her son's predicament. The son's survival becomes a source for drama in the book. When the reader sees that the son has survived, the quickly learn about Karin's death, which again returns a fear of death to the text.
The unseen passion of motherhood
This book points through its plot to the unseen pain of motherhood. This constitutes a usage of dramatic irony, since a person can walk by a mother and child on the street and be completely unaware the depths of passion she may be enduring. Love makes a mother willing to do anything for her child, which then in turn makes life into a religious martyrdom. Ultimately, a mother must admit the ultimate fear: she is not able to control life enough to protect her child. She must accept the child's fate and the inevitability of death. That happens to Sigita, and then she gets the child back, which reminds the reader the full weight of ironic drama; how much fear and suffering she endures in the name of love.
The ironic depths of greed
To this more mother, life went from bliss to absolute horror. She is suddenly plagued to understand why the universe has allowed such a conspiracy against her family. She has to struggle in her imagination to understand why this man is so motivated. He is motivated with the exact opposite intention as her motherhood, to harm the one child she needs to protect. And for what? One one side of the pendulum, a mother's infinite love for innocent child; on the other side, a thirst for money and power.
The orphan and widow irony
It seems unfair that people who are already disenfranchised or afflicted should be the targets of schemes and conspiracy, but they are the weakest of the bunch, so we see in this novel an irony that has religious overtones: Those who need the most help are not only not helped by those in power with the ability to help them; they are actually hurt. Jan is a businessman with exceptional resources, and instead of feeling the pain of his son's death and being reminded of the suffering of those around him, he hires a hitman to kidnap an innocent child. His targeting of the weak makes him a suitable symbol for true evil.
