The Knife of Never Letting Go Themes

Patrick Ness’s novel The Knife of Never Letting Go is about settlers from an Old World who travel across space trying to escape the violence of their home planet, only to create a new society full of violence in the New World. At the center of the story is Todd, who always carries a knife with him, and who constantly grapples with the question of whether he’s able to kill another human—and whether or…

Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go takes place on a planet where everyone can hear the thoughts—the Noise—of men all the time. Although Noise is a fantasy concept, it seems to have clear parallels to the Internet, where, at the time the novel was published in 2008, social media was growing rapidly. The New World that Todd lives in is a place where men don’t seem to have privacy anymore because everyone around…

One of the most unusual features of the New World in The Knife of Never Letting Go is that animals can communicate with humans through Noise and sometimes even speech. The best example of the connection between humanity and nature in the first half of the novel is the relationship between Todd and his talking dog, Manchee. At first, Todd has a strained relationship with Manchee, only putting up with the dog because he…