Friendship and Chosen Family Theme Analysis

None of the families in They Both Die at the End are conventional, whole, or uncomplicated. Mateo’s mother died in childbirth with him, while Mateo’s dad is in a coma; Rufus lost his parents and older sister months before the novel begins and is now in foster care; and Lidia is raising Penny with the help of her Abuelita, as her boyfriend Christian died weeks before Penny was born. However, all of these characters make a point to reach out to their friends and to chosen family for companionship and support: Mateo watches Penny so Lidia can have time to herself, while Rufus becomes a beloved member of the Plutos, the group comprised of Rufus and three other kids in foster care. They Both Die at the End shows that despite difficult family situations, people can still find community and companionship—but they must turn to friendship and to chosen family, rather than focusing on blood family.

The most poignant example of chosen family within the novel is the Plutos, the group that Rufus, Tagoe, Malcolm, and Aimee form in their foster home. They call themselves the Plutos because in the same way that the dwarf planet Pluto was demoted from being a real planet, they’ve all been “demoted” from their blood families in some way. This, however, doesn’t mean that the boys don’t still need love, care, and connection—but it does mean that they have to look for it elsewhere. This is especially true since their foster parents, Francis and Jenn Lori, are caring but somewhat distant. They provide food, shelter, and serve the Plutos’ basic needs in terms of emotional support, but there are also limits on what they can do to support four grieving, abandoned, and distrustful older teens. The most important thing that Francis and Jenn Lori do is give the Plutos space to form close, intimate bonds with one another; this allows the Plutos themselves to support one another in ways that Francis and Jenn Lori cannot. Even though Francis and Jenn Lori fall short in some ways, Rufus’s emotional stability and happiness that he ended up in their home is a testament to the idea that families don’t have to look a certain way or be created in any particular way to be sufficiently supportive. What matters instead is that the members of a family care about one another and show that, to the greatest extent that they can.

The novel also goes to great lengths to show that in addition to support like the Plutos provide Rufus, friends—especially new ones—have the power to help people become who they want to be. Mateo has always wanted to be an open, carefree person who sings in front of people and wears silly clothes. But due to his anxiety and the self-isolation he uses to cope with it, Mateo seldom gets to be that person except for in his head. As an entirely new person to Mateo, Rufus is able to enter Mateo’s life and turn it upside-down. While Lidia, for instance, provides Mateo with a stable, dependable friendship that doesn’t stray outside of his comfort zone, Rufus recognizes that there’s more to Mateo than his shy, quiet appearance might suggest. Through Rufus is still a good friend by many standards—he’s respectful of Mateo’s limits, he’s kind, and he keeps his promises to Mateo when he makes them—he also doesn’t have years of history with Mateo, and so he’s better able than anyone else to convince Mateo that he can indeed change who he is—even on the last day of his life. Because of this, it’s possible to argue that Rufus is the only person who gets to see Mateo exactly as he wants to be seen. Because Rufus is able to convince Mateo to sing, be silly, and admit his sexual orientation (Mateo comes out as gay), he sees Mateo like no one else. Thus, Mateo gets to die as the person he wants to be—all because of Rufus’s affirming, supportive friendship.

Dalma Young, the creator of the Last Friend app, understands the intense need for friendship in people’s lives—she did, after all, create an app designed to give lonely people a friend in their final hours. And indeed, her app helps Mateo and Rufus, who are going to die on the same day, find each other. In terms of beginning a friendship, Last Friend removes many barriers that people face to becoming friends on any other day of their lives. Because Mateo and Rufus are well aware that they’re going to die at the end of the day, they’re more willing than they might normally be to open themselves up to a complete stranger and share their deepest secrets with each other. And ultimately, this leads to the beginning of Mateo and Rufus’s chosen family when they kiss and vocalize that they love each other. However tender their romantic relationship might be, both boys purposefully focus on their friendship, not necessarily on their romantic relationship, when they talk about their relationship to each other. Over the course of the boys’ End Day, thanks to Last Friend, they find the friend that neither of them had been able to find up to this point: the one capable of growing into a life partner, even if that life together only lasts a single day. Friendship, the novel shows, is an essential element of being human—it’s important enough to spend one’s last day cultivating.