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Chapter 70
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
Evan tells Cassie he’ll shoot if she runs away again. He admits it’s his job to kill humans but says he’s fallen in love with Cassie. He maintains that a part of him is human. Cassie says Evan must know the truth about Wright-Patterson. He admits he does and that he believes Sammy is being prepared to become part of the 5th Wave. He adds that Wright-Patterson isn’t just a base but the base, with Vosch as the head commander who came up with the attacks that killed seven billion people.
Evan’s status as an alien in a human body raises questions of identity and of what even defines humanity. Evan’s state seems to suggest that humanity isn’t just about biology—it’s also about social factors like caring for others, and this means that sometimes full humans can lose their humanity while human–alien hybrids like Evan can display a strong sense of humanity.
Themes
Cassie can’t even look at Evan anymore. They go back to discussing infiltrating the base. Evan explains how Cassie will look infected to Sammy, so they’ll have to be careful. Evan explained that the 4th Wave was Silencers, aliens disguised as humans. Cassie asks Evan what he “really” looks like, but he says he is pure consciousness and hasn’t had a real body in tens of thousands of years. He and his race downloaded their psyches into their mothership’s mainframe.
Although Cassie distrusts Evan, feeling betrayed by him, her dedication to Sammy is even greater, and she realizes that Evan can still help her rescue her brother. Evan’s status as a bodiless consciousness—something very different from a human—suggests why he and Cassie struggle to understand each other, but it also shows how miraculous it as that he and Cassie managed to reach as much of an understand as they did, despite coming from different parts of the universe.
Themes
Evan says that maybe he can show Cassie what he’s really like. He tells her to close her eyes and be calm. Cassie feels warmth overcoming her body. She feels at one with the universe as she opens herself up.
Witnessing Evan’s real form feels like the physical experience of love to Cassie—or perhaps like a religious revelation. This passage suggests that all of those types of connection are related to each other and can come to people who are willing to be vulnerable.
Themes
