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Chapter 57
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
Flintstone blames Ben for Oompa’s death. Teacup is in total shock. Ben goes to find Ringer and Poundcake, who are squatting by a wall. They’ve been watching the sniper, who pops up over the wall occasionally. Surprisingly, the sniper doesn’t have the green head glow of an infected. Ringer thinks maybe the sniper has mistaken the squad for infected. Ben tells Poundcake to wait 10 minutes, then shoot covering fire at the sniper so the others can get away. Ben and Ringer go back to regroup with the others, where Flintstone is still angry.
Although the graduation ceremony celebrated the people in Ben’s squad as hardened soldiers, the reality of combat is nothing that their training could have prepared them for. The fact that the sniper is clearly shooting at them but lacks a green glow on his head suggests that the simple Camp Haven way of looking at the world, infected vs. clean, may not apply to real combat.
Themes
