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Chapter 8
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 recalls a trip she took with her father to Rockhound State Park the summer she turned 12. They went there to collect jasper for one of Petra’s father’s projects. As they meticulously pick at the ground with hammers and pails, Petra’s father tells her about how each jasper is different, but their uniqueness as individual stones makes the pail of jasper more beautiful. A truck arrives at the site, and men exit it and start drilling for turquoise. They use a machine to detect deposits of it in the ground and fill buckets with as much as they can. Petra asks why they can’t drill for turquoise to make some money, too, but her father tells her that they have more respect for the environment than that. Petra and her father work for hours after the men leave. While they rest and chat, it starts to rain.
This scene from Petra’s memory presents another counterargument to the Collective’s ideas through her father’s wisdom. The Collective believes that diversity makes society worse, but Petra’s father teaches her that variety is what makes things beautiful. Additionally, one of the Collective’s talking points later in the novel is to accuse Earth’s humans of selfishly exploiting their own planet. This anecdote proves that this is partially true, as the men in the truck damage the soil to reap rewards as quickly as possible. However, Petra and her father’s alternative approach demonstrates that the opposite is true, too: many humans have respect for Earth. Like jasper, no two humans are the same.
Active
Themes
