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Chapter 8
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
There are three dead bodies by the highway, an older man, a young woman Cassie’s age, and a boy of about 12. As Cassie is examining the bodies, she looks up and sees a drone. She ducks just in time. Although she doesn’t hear a shot, she feels something hit her leg and realizes that someone has fired at her with a weapon that has a silencer. Going forward, Cassie decides to use the word Silencer to refer to all soldiers for the aliens, both because they use silencers and because they try to silence people by killing them.
While a silencer is literally a device that can be attached to a gun to make it quieter, Cassie uses the word “Silencer” for multiple reasons beyond that. For one, the Silencers kill, which is perhaps the most extreme way of making something silent. The Silencers also want to strip people of their humanity in general, making humans afraid to trust one another, and this attempt to repress the human spirit is another form of silencing.
Themes
Cassie tries to run, but she ends up cornered. She waits, but nothing happens, and she realizes that whoever or whatever is firing at her might be using a sniper rifle at a distance. Cassie feels that if she runs, she’ll die, but she’ll also die if she stays, so she doesn’t know what to do.
The Silencer regards Cassie like prey. This is another sign of how the Silencer is trying to dehumanize her. Cassie’s dilemma—where whether she runs or stays, she still dies—reflects the impossible choices that she sometimes has to make.
Themes
