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
There are 42 local Last Friend users online. Mateo receives a message from Wendy Mae, a girl who just wants to console Deckers. He figures she probably reached out because she also loves Scorpius Hawthorne. Aspects of her profile are grating—she talks like she has lots of time left to live, which Mateo finds tone-deaf—and her message also makes a bad joke about stopping death. Not wanting to be rude, Mateo messages her back. They chat until Wendy Mae says that Mateo’s dad must be losing it. Mateo says he’s done talking, but Wendy Mae asks if they can have sex—she wants to practice before she officially loses her virginity to her boyfriend. Other users message because they’re looking for a couch or trying to selling pot. A user named Philly tells Mateo he “has the cure to death in [his] pants.”
Mateo’s politeness would, in many cases, make it easier for him to make friends—but with someone like Wendy Mae, who isn’t all that polite herself and clearly doesn’t care about who Mateo really is, being so polite just makes it harder for Mateo to move on and find someone who does care. The users looking to buy or sell things, as well as Philly’s sexual message, also drive home that even businesses with good intentions (like the one behind the Last Friends app) don’t—and can’t—get things right all the time. These slip-ups are dehumanizing and disheartening for users like Mateo, who come to the app trying to form genuine connections with others.
Themes
