Previous
Chapter 7
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 slowly wakes up. She is hopeful that the ship has arrived at Sagan, but when she hears Ben’s pleading voice, she realizes that they haven’t yet gotten there. Ben is mumbling “please work” over and over as he pokes at a control panel by Petra’s pod. Someone pounds on the door to the youth stasis room and enters it by force. A scuffle ensues, and Petra hears Ben’s body hit the floor. The newcomers examine the control panel and realize that Petra has memories of Earth stories. A woman’s voice orders the others to delete any files from Petra’s past in order to uphold the Collective, which is now in power and pursuing its mission of “a new history.” Petra imagines that she’s with Lita under the stars again.
Petra doesn’t yet know what Ben’s last act was before he died, but she understands that other occupants of the ship have killed him. She doesn’t recognize the voice of the woman who gives the order to wipe Petra’s memory files. Since this event takes place within Ben’s lifetime, it the voice could belong to the Lead Monitor—or it might be whoever is now in charge of the new Collective. It's striking that one small failure of the Collective’s memory-wiping initiative threatens to collapse the entire order and destroy their new history. This fact underlines how tenuous and unnatural the Collective’s mission is.
Active
Themes
