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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Last Cuentista, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Story and Memory
Assimilation vs. Diversity
Family
Resistance, Courage, and Kindness
Summary
Analysis
Petra remembers a night a week before her family left Earth. That night, she overhears her parents talking after she and Javier are supposed to be in bed, and she decides to creep closer to the living room to eavesdrop. Petra’s mother and father are discussing a group of people called “Monitors” who’ve been chosen to make a “sacrifice.” Petra assumes they’re having a hypothetical discussion about the survival of the human race on another planet—she doesn’t realize they’re discussing something that will actually happen in the near future.
Again, sacrifice enters the narrative. Petra doesn’t yet understand what the sacrifice in question is, or who the Monitors making it might be. Her ignorance of the situation suggests that her parents must have worked hard to keep the comet’s incoming collision a secret from Petra and Javier. Or, depending on the context of the news clip that follows, it’s possible that the government has suppressed or limited news of the comet while they’ve formulated a plan for some people to escape Earth.
Active
Themes
Petra’s mother and father turn on the news. A man who represents the Global Peace Forum is talking. He presents a vision of humanity’s future that is free of war and conflict, in which everybody lives in perfect unison because the pain of their memories is gone. The man suggests that in order for humanity to stop suffering, they have to achieve sameness and “create a new history.” Petra’s parents seem worried as they listen to the broadcast, and Petra’s father points out that equality and sameness are not the same thing. He reassures Petra’s mother that their duty moving forward will be to help people embrace their differences and remember their pasts.
