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Mateo, 3:14 a.m.
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in They Both Die at the End, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mortality, Life, and Meaning
Human Connection and Social Media
Choices and Consequences
Friendship and Chosen Family
Business, Ethics, and Dehumanization
Summary
Analysis
Andrea isn’t dying today. She’s one of Death-Cast’s top reps. Tonight, she made 67 calls between midnight and 3:00 a.m.—it’s been hard to beat her record of 92 calls since they put her under inspection for rushing. She hopes that HR won’t review her log; she mixed up several names. It’d be an awful time to lose her job: she needs lots of physical therapy after an accident, and she has to pay her daughter’s school tuition. This is also the only job she’s ever been good at. Her hack is to believe that Deckers aren’t people—this mindset means she doesn’t waste hours with company counselors. She knows there’s nothing she can do for the Deckers; she doesn’t pray for them or comfort them. She tells herself that the Deckers she calls are lucky because she gives them the opportunity to really live.
Though Andrea reads as callous in a variety of ways, her mindset is designed to help her—and she has every reason to want to be able to do her job well, since she depends on the insurance and her paycheck. In short, Andrea is a complex person, even if she’s gone to extreme and arguably offensive lengths to get through the day. When she suggests that she’s the one who gives them the opportunity to live, it shows that she’s well aware that people take things more seriously when they know they’re dying. Whether this is a good thing or not, Andrea is able to frame it so that she can get through her work days and live with herself.
Themes
