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Chapter 44
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The 5th Wave, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trust and Belief
Survival and Perseverance
Warfare and Dehumanization
Family
Summary
Analysis
The next morning, Zombie goes to Reznik with a request to exempt Nugget from the morning’s duties. Reznik refuses. At breakfast, Zombie learns that Nugget also went through a test with Dr. Pam that involved pressing a button to kill a person. They call infected people “Teds.”
The name “Teds” (likely from “infecTeds”) shows how the soldiers at Camp Haven learn to see their enemies as one indistinguishable mass, calling them all by the same name. At Camp Haven, the soldiers learn not only the physical methods of killing another person but also a convenient, more palatable way of thinking about it—beginning with Dr. Pam’s test to push the execution button.
Themes
After breakfast, Zombie and his squad have to go clean up corpses. Some are Teds, which are marked with a bright green circle on their foreheads, and some are not. They have to empty the pockets and sort the personal items in different bins. Nugget is quiet the whole time. Eventually, he looks like he’s going to faint. Zombie is so upset at seeing Nugget that he starts to feel sick himself.
The bright green markings on the heads of Teds recall ways that people have been singled out by symbols throughout history, such as how Jewish people had to wear markings during the Holocaust. The sheer number of bodies as well as the fact that many of the bodies don’t have a marking on them suggest that there is widespread violence and suffering going on where the camp residents can’t see.
Themes
