87 pages • 2 hours read
Matt de la PeñaThe Living
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Day 4, Chapters 31-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 31-34 Summary
By morning, Shy has grown debilitatingly weak with hunger. The three survivors still have the remains of a gallon of water to share between them, but no food. Addison has finally begun to speak again, and she vents her frustrations at the sharks and at Shy. Shy’s attempts to ask her about her father’s photograph of him send her into a rage, stifling any further conversation.
As the hours pass, Shy begins attempting to catch a fish using the fishing kit in the boat’s supply cabinet. As he does, he and Addison have another falling out; in response to Shy commenting on her father’s mysterious job, Addison responds: “You probably don’t even have a dad […] Doesn’t everyone like you grow up with a single mom?” (173). Addison soon realizes she’s gone too far, but Shy refuses to accept her apology. Meanwhile, Shy repeatedly tries and fails to catch a fish.
Shy fishes for hours with no success and begins imagining places from his hometown to try to keep his mind off of the pain, hunger, and thirst. This is the first time he’s taken a moment to properly reflect on what must have happened to his family: “It was the first time he’d actually thought about what he’d lost in a conscious way” (177).
At Addison’s request, Shy finally decides to throw the rotting corpses overboard, as the smell is starting to become unbearable. As he does, he realizes the significance of the corpses:
They’d always been a symbol of his hope of being rescued. If he kept them in the boat, the boat was more likely to be found. That’s what was in the back of his head. And the rescue team would commend him for hanging on to the bodies so the families could take them back home and bury them. Shy realized something about himself right then. It was one thing to decide he’d given up hope. It was another to kill the symbol of it (177).
By finally abandoning the bodies, Shy has given up any hope of being rescued. With that done, he turns his full attention to trying to survive. He and Addison begin rowing in the same direction as the tide, hoping that it will lead them to one of the Hidden Islands. Shy teaches Addison to fish so that he can begin rowing, and Addison finally begins to warm up to him, telling him to call her “Addie.”
Addison and Shy take turns rowing and fishing, although neither catches a fish. William’s bite wound has become severely infected, and everyone on the raft knows that he doesn’t have long to live. Shy insists on giving him water anyway despite William’s protests. As Addison rows, she finally decides to tell Shy what she can about the Hidden Islands: “[A]ccording to my dad, they used to be a cluster of four, but now three are underwater. Only Jones Island is still inhabitable, which is where he works” (182). Addison has never been there in person, and she explains that she barely has a relationship with her father. She also mentions that his company makes pharmaceuticals and that he was only on the cruise to try to find out what happened to David Williamson. She then informs Shy that Bill, the man in the black suit, works security for her father and that her father owns LasoTech.
After Shy and Addison talk, they become more comfortable around each other. In time, all three survivors attempt to sleep; Shy has difficulty sleeping despite his exhaustion, and his mind roams from Bill’s threats back on the ship to the glimpse he caught of Carmen’s body the other day. When he finally does fall asleep, he dreams of Carmen. In his dream, Carmen explains that their friendship will be healthier if Shy is also in a relationship, and she suggests that he and Addison “need each other right now” (191). The dream then shifts to one of William Henry sawing off his leg with a table saw, before Shy wakes up and realizes that the real William is talking to him. William thanks Shy for listening to him talk about his girlfriend and tells him that although he believes women love expensive jewelry, “women love expensive jewelry even more when it comes from the right person” (192). Then he gives Shy a long hug, despite Shy’s protests, and says: “Be the right person. […] gifts are more meaningful when they come from the right person” (192). After this conversation, Shy chooses to sit next to Addison as she sleeps, wrapping an arm around her shoulder to keep her warm.
Day 4 Analysis
On the fourth day, Shy and Addison finally begin setting their differences aside. They still argue at first, each resenting the other for their differences in social status, but they come to realize that status no longer has any bearing in their current situation. Although their cooperation is forced by necessity at first, it soon develops into real personal growth; Addison and Shy develop levels of empathy and maturity they did not possess before the storm. They also come to recognize value in each other that they did not notice before: Addison is more capable than Shy expected of a “skinny, private-school racist” (181), and she no longer sees Shy as inferior to herself.
This developing companionship is a major factor in their survival, although they may not realize it at first; later in the book, each is able to overcome hopelessness and exhaustion and carry on for the other’s sake when they might have given up entirely on their own. As they begin to take turns rowing and fishing, Addison and Shy begin sharing the burden of survival together. Shy now has something like a support system again, which helps him to combat the feelings of isolation and despair that have been eating away at him. He still struggles with these feelings; after his strange conversation with William, Shy feels alone as he listens to the ocean:
He stared up at the glowing moon again, and he listened to the whispering ocean. His thoughts were more staticky than before, but for the first time since the summer started, he felt like he understood the ocean’s whispering. It all came down to this. The darkness. The loneliness. The mystery. The fact that everyone’s days were numbered, and it didn’t matter if you were in premier class or worked in housekeeping. Those were only costumes people wore. And once you stripped them away you saw the truth. This giant ocean and this dark pressing sky. We only have a few minutes, but the unexplainable world is constant and forever marching forward. Shy felt nauseous from the realization, like he’d been shown something humans weren’t equipped to see (193).
Here, Shy is clearly still struggling with the existential dread that set in when he watched David Williamson disappear into the ocean. Instead of spiraling into despair, however, he sits down next to Addison, sharing body heat with her and taking strength from human companionship. Despite his fear and pain, he is able to fall asleep this time with no mention of the flashbacks he usually experiences when he shuts his eyes. De la Peña shows us in this scene that survival is not a purely physical challenge; this thread continues throughout the book, as Shy’s strength often comes from the people around him.
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