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87 pages 2 hours read

Matt de la Peña

The Living

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Themes

Power, Class, and Race Dynamics

Power, class, and race are tied tightly together in American culture, and the same goes for the world presented by The Living. The Paradise Line cruise ship, complete with its over-the-top level of luxury provided by an overworked, under-respected crew, acts as a microcosm of modern capitalist America. The premier class passengers are rich, privileged, and self-centered, and Shy and Carmen are forced to endure their constant microaggressions with a smile if they want to keep their jobs. This dynamic is intended to echo the flaws present in American culture, in particular the ideas that those with money and privilege inherently wield some amount of power over those without, and that the majority of the systems in place work in favor of keeping things that way.

Once the cruise sinks, however—when the society in question is disassembled and the rules that keep the privileged in power are abandoned—things begin to change. Shy sees this firsthand when he, Addison, and William Henry are stranded on a lifeboat together; there is nothing left to keep them from being equals, and that gives them the freedom to bond with each other on a more meaningful level than they ever could on the cruise ship. Their survival depends on their ability to work together, rather than on their positions of power and social status.

These dynamics also come into play when the truth about Romero Disease is revealed. LasoTech, spearheaded by Jim Miller, chooses to begin spreading the disease in poor Mexican border towns, with the knowledge that thousands will die before the disease gains traction in the United States. This decision shows that Jim Miller sees the lives of poor people and people of color as less valuable—although it is clear that he assigns little value to human life in general. The news coverage of Romero Disease’s spread shows a similar trend that infuriates Carmen: Thousands die of Romero while the disease is primarily spreading through Mexico and towns along the Mexican border, and it isn’t until wealthy white people become sick that the story becomes international news.

Man Versus Nature

While Shy does struggle within a fundamentally flawed system, both at home and on the cruise ship, his struggle against nature itself quickly becomes a more pressing concern. This is a classic theme in fiction, and for good reason; an internal conflict can be dealt with, and a conflict with another person can usually be understood and resolved, but nature cannot be reasoned with or defeated. This is the realization Shy rails against for much of the book—that, as much as he might struggle and as long as he might survive, his death is inevitable. His many brushes with death leave his mortality at the forefront of his mind, and Shy realizes that even if he survives the sinking ship, being lost at sea, and his conflict with LasoTech, all he’s really doing is delaying the inevitable.

Whenever Shy considers nature, in particular the ocean and its inhabitants, the sheer scale it frightens him on an existential level. He is barely a grain of sand compared to the size of the ocean, and having his life threatened by something that cannot think, feel, or reason is all the more frightening. The sharks that constantly circle his lifeboat are a smaller example of the conflict between Shy and the ocean; they, too, are not acting out of malice or cruelty. The sharks have no agenda beyond their next meal, and if they eventually succeed in killing him, it will be as meaningless as if he manages to escape. Like the ocean, all Shy can do is attempt to hold them off for the foreseeable future, surviving in the moment with no ability to be rid of them for good.

Eventually, however, Shy comes to terms with the inevitability of his death and finds peace with the idea that no matter what happens in life, he will always have been part of something larger than himself. Once he begins to see the world as one interconnected being, something that keeps living even after the individual parts come and go, he feels “a weight lifted from his shoulders” (226). Shy loses some of the fear and existential dread he has been carrying when he makes this realization, and he no longer dwells on feelings of insignificance and isolation in his moments alone.

Coping with Trauma

Although Shy avoids discussing it, he is deeply traumatized after witnessing the death of his grandmother and the suicide of David Williamson. Early in the book, Shy realizes the effect the suicide had on him, thinking, “He’d never admit it to anyone, but seeing a guy fall from the ship had sort of messed something up in his head” (17), and he fears that he will never be able to laugh again. Shy has vivid, bloody nightmares of David and his grandmother whenever he tries to sleep, and the moments of their deaths come to him in flashbacks and daydreams almost constantly. He is also still coping with the memory of his now-absent father’s abusive behavior, although this is rarely mentioned.

As the book progresses, Shy witnesses countless violent, gruesome deaths, most of which take place within arm’s reach of him. He watches a woman, “her throat pierced by a thick shard of glass” (124), choke on her own blood right in front of him, as well as the countless others who die when the cruise ship sinks. He watches helplessly as five survivors are dragged to their deaths by sharks, the last of whom is pulled straight out of his arms, just as David Williamson was. The horror Shy feels at witnessing all of these deaths stays with him, and he internalizes it. He feels guilty for all the people he was unable to save, the same way he feels responsible for Williamson’s death: “He died because I wasn’t strong enough to hang on to him” (184).

All of these traumatic moments begin to weigh on Shy before long, but he has no way to cope with the way he’s feeling, especially not while he’s trying to stay alive in the middle of the open ocean. He is wracked by constant feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and dread; he begins to believe that his life is entirely insignificant. Even when he finally begins to feel safe after making it to Jones Island, he is never rid of his survivor’s guilt: “Why should he live and Kevin die? What made him any more worthy? Nothing” (255).

The realizations that Shy comes to over time—that the inevitability of death is not necessarily a bad thing, that he is grateful to have lived the life he has lived, that his life is worth just as much as the lives of those around him—help to lessen the symptoms of his trauma, and he no longer experiences the same flashbacks and nightmares that he did earlier in the book—but he will never be the same as he was before his first voyage. This transformation is foreshadowed before the ship sinks, when Shy first sees the fear in Carmen’s eyes: “He knew immediately his life would be forever changed” (107).

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