Previous
Survival and Perseverance
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The 5th Wave, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
In The 5th Wave, humanity faces an enemy that comes from within—a race of bodiless aliens from across the universe who can infiltrate human consciousness, making a person “infected.” This means that in many cases it’s impossible to tell who the enemy is, as the aliens look just like humans. Once they’ve infiltrated human society, the aliens take advantage of humanity’s tendency to break into groups of us and them. They take young humans like Ben and Sammy away from their families and train them to see all other humans as their enemies—literally seeing them as enemies, with eyepieces that make humans without a special chip in their necks glow green, denoting them as targets to shoot. The aliens tell their trainees that their enemies literally are not human, that they are infected by alien parasites that have overtaken their consciousness. As Ben learns, this is a lie. The humans that glow green are in fact fellow humans, not the ones infected by aliens. All of this is a metaphor for how warfare teaches combatants to dehumanize their supposed enemies—and how this might lead them to miss who their true enemies are.
As the alien leader Vosch’s schemes come to light, it becomes clear that his goal is not just to physically exterminate humans, but to remove the things that make them human, all as part of his race’s total warfare against humanity. And so, at Vosch’s command, the aliens not only exterminate humans, but also break apart families and try to break morale, echoing the tactics used in real-life genocides. Vosch brings this same attitude to how he runs Camp Haven, where he assigns human soldiers identification numbers and code names (like Ben’s conspicuously nonhuman name, Zombie), thereby depriving them of their identities as humans. The training program is brutal and demeaning, driving home that warfare isn’t just about dehumanizing the enemy—it’s also about dehumanizing oneself. The 5th Wave explores how warfare is only possible when combatants are taught to see both their enemies and themselves as less than human, while suggesting that the soldiers’ true enemies are the ones giving them orders.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Warfare and Dehumanization ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Warfare and Dehumanization appears in each chapter of The 5th Wave. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
Get the entire The 5th Wave LitChart as a printable PDF.
Warfare and Dehumanization Quotes in The 5th Wave
Below you will find the important quotes in The 5th Wave related to the theme of Warfare and Dehumanization.
Chapter 2
Quotes
Sometimes I think I might be the last human on Earth.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4
Quotes
I went up to him before the last of the light was gone. Not to see if he was dead.
I knew he was dead. I wanted to see what he was still holding in his bloody hand.
It was a crucifix.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24
Quotes
Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.
And if this is humanity’s last war, then I am the battlefield.
Chapter 31
Quotes
A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn’t cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost.
His heart, the war.
Her face, the battlefield.
With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned.
And ran.
Chapter 36
Quotes
“You want to compare yourself to an insect, Cassie? If you’re an insect, then you’re a mayfly. Here for a day and then gone. That doesn’t have anything to do with the Others. It’s always been that way. We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.”
Chapter 40
Quotes
Number forty-nine has been mapped.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42
Quotes
Zombie was born on the morning I left the convalescent ward. Traded in my flimsy gown for a blue jumpsuit. Assigned a bunk in Barracks 10. Whipped back into shape by three squares a day and brutal physical training, but most of all by Reznik, the regiment’s senior drill instructor, the man who smashed Ben Parish into a million pieces, then reconstructed him into the merciless zombie killing machine that he is today.
Chapter 47
Quotes
Tank’s body is stacked with the others by the hangar doors to be disposed. He’s loaded onto the transport for the final leg of his journey to the incinerators, where he will be consumed in fire, his ashes mixing with the gray smoke and carried aloft in a column of superheated air, eventually to settle over us in particles too fine to see or feel.
Chapter 55
Quotes
“I had it all wrong,” he says. “Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn’t. To hold on, you have to find something you’re willing to die for.”
Chapter 57
Quotes
He whispers something. I bring my ear close to his mouth. “My name is Kenny.” Like it’s a terrible secret he’s been afraid to share.
His eyes roll toward the ceiling. Then he’s gone.
Chapter 60
Quotes
“Ben, we’re the 5th Wave.”
Chapter 69
Quotes
“I don’t want to be a shark,” I whisper.
He looks at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. He could have said, Shark? Who? What? Huh? Who said you were a shark? Instead, he begins to nod, like he totally gets it. “You aren’t.”
You, not we. I give his long look back to him.
Chapter 79
Quotes
You’re soft. You should have killed him. You can’t rely on luck and wishful thinking. The future of humanity belongs to the hardcore.
Chapter 83
Quotes
I level the silencer at his chest as his hand emerges from the pocket.
The hand that holds a gun.
But my hand holds an M16 assault rifle.
How long is one half of one half second?
Long enough for a little boy who doesn’t know the first rule to leap between the gun and the rifle.
Chapter 87
Quotes
That’s the flaw in Vosch’s master plan: If you don’t kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak.
It’s the strong who remain, the bent but unbroken, like the iron rods that used to give this concrete its strength.
Floods, fires, earthquakes, disease, starvation, betrayal, isolation, murder.
What doesn’t kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us.
Chapter 90
Quotes
And then, instead of jumping onto the Humvee like a normal person, Ben Parish turns and races back for me.
I wave him back. No time, no time, no time no time no time no time.
