This Is Where It Ends

by

Marieke Nijkamp

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This Is Where It Ends Themes

Themes and Colors
Gun Violence Theme Icon
Community and Tragedy Theme Icon
Family and Sibling Relationships Theme Icon
Change, Uncertainty, and Growing Up Theme Icon
Abuse Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in This Is Where It Ends, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Gun Violence

Gun violence is an ongoing crisis in the US, and This Is Where It Ends comments on this state of affairs by chronicling a school shooting in the fictional town of Opportunity, Alabama. The shooter, Tyler Browne, is a disaffected high school student whose rage and grievances stem from a strong sense of male entitlement, which he derives from his father. Through the character of Tyler, whose profile matches that of many real-life shooters…

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Community and Tragedy

Narrated by four high school seniors, This is Where It Ends details the effects of a mass shooting on the small, insular community of Opportunity, Alabama. As they prepare for the first day of school at the novel’s outset, all the protagonists are concerned with their individual goals and feel either trapped or alienated by their community. However, as it becomes apparent that there’s an active shooter in the building, each narrator explicitly chooses to…

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Family and Sibling Relationships

Some families in This Is Where It Ends are characterized by generally positive relationships: Claire takes pride in caring for her younger brother, Matt, while the twins Sylvia and Tomás have a fraught but close relationship. Elsewhere, the dynamic is less healthy: Autumn sees her brother Tyler as a loving defense against her abusive Dad, but as the novel progresses Tyler reveals himself as violent and predatory towards her as well. Despite the…

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Change, Uncertainty, and Growing Up

As seniors in high school, all four narrators of This Is Where It Ends face significant anxiety about leaving high school and beginning new lives as adults. While all the characters share the understandable fear that physically leaving their town will erode their most important emotional relationships, Tyler takes this philosophy to the extreme, attempting to enforce stability in his own life and exploding in catastrophic rage when those around him refuse to comply. In…

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Abuse

The town of Opportunity, Alabama, seems to be a quaint and wholesome place, but flashbacks throughout the novel show moments of violence and abuse perpetrated or endured by nearly all the characters. Most notable is Tyler’s history of abusing others, namely Autumn and Sylvia, prior to becoming a mass shooter; however, Tyler himself has also been abused, and his experiences certainly shape his nefarious character. In all these cases, instances of abuse are…

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