Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in They Both Die at the End, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mortality, Life, and Meaning
Human Connection and Social Media
Choices and Consequences
Friendship and Chosen Family
Business, Ethics, and Dehumanization
Summary
Analysis
Mateo and Rufus pass a bookstore, and Mateo thinks he needs some books after seeing a scary man with the gym bag. Rufus agrees to go in. Mateo knows this is a bad idea since he can’t read all the books. He wonders if a bookshelf will crush him. Instead, Mateo knocks into a display table and knocks books over. A man whose nametag says “Joel” assures Mateo that it’s fine. Rufus shadows Mateo as Mateo reads staff recommendations. In front of the romance section, he stops in front of books wrapped in brown paper. Rufus asks if Mateo has ever dated. Mateo hasn’t. Rufus shares that Aimee was his first relationship, but he tried to date at his last school. He suggests that Mateo sends postcards to his past crushes.
If Mateo chooses to send the postcards, they’d function in much in the same way that photos do: they’d remind everyone who received one that Mateo lived, and they’d provide those recipients with a piece of Mateo to remember. In addition to Joel’s nametag humanizing him for Mateo, his kindness also means that Mateo is more willing to take notice. Joel shows here that he’s good at his job: because he makes Mateo feel at ease, Mateo is able to have one final joyful experience in a bookstore.
Themes
Mateo grabs a dozen postcards and one of the wrapped mystery books, and Joel checks him out. Mateo thinks that with the postcards, he can apply Rufus’s advice to use his voice. Mateo tells Rufus that when he was nine, he asked Dad if love was hiding under the couch or in the closet. Dad told Mateo that love is a superpower, but not one that they can always control. Blushing, Mateo says he shouldn’t have said such a stupid thing, but Rufus smiles and says that he loves it. Mateo looks up, noting how much he likes Rufus’s eyes, and he asks how he knows when love is love. Before Rufus can answer, glass shatters, and the boys are blown backwards. Mateo slams into a car and almost passes out. Rufus’s eyes are closed, and the postcards are scattered. Rufus and a woman with brightly colored hair are alive, but other people aren’t.
Deciding to send the postcards and taking Rufus’s advice to heart is a step in the right direction for Mateo. He’s learning that hanging out on social media all day isn’t going to make people feel as connected to him as actively reaching out via postcards will. Fostering more of these connections will help Mateo live longer in his loved ones’ memories in much the same way that Mateo’s mom continues to live on as Mateo talks about her. As Vin’s bomb explodes, Rufus and Mateo are forced to come face to face with the fact that dying in the explosion could’ve been their fate had things gone just a little bit differently.
Themes
