They Both Die at the End Themes

They Both Die at the End plunges the reader into a world that, in a variety of ways, doesn’t seem that much different from the reader’s world—except when it comes to dying. In the novel, individuals who are going to die in the next 24 hours (Deckers) receive calls from an organization called Death-Cast between midnight and three in the morning, informing them of this fact so that they can make the most…

At the start of the novel, Death-Cast (a system that alerts people 24 hours before they’re going to die) has been in operation for about six years. Two years before the novel begins, the app Last Friend debuted. Last Friend is one of many apps and social media platforms that developers created to serve the Deckers (people who know they’re going to die) and others who are interested in and want to connect with Deckers…

None of the families in They Both Die at the End are conventional, whole, or uncomplicated. Mateo’s mother died in childbirth with him, while Mateo’s dad is in a coma; Rufus lost his parents and older sister months before the novel begins and is now in foster care; and Lidia is raising Penny with the help of her Abuelita, as her boyfriend Christian died weeks before Penny was born. However, all of these…

While They Both Die at the End doesn’t engage outright with the question of whether or not the Death-Cast system (a business that gives people 24 hours’ notice of their death) is good or moral, it does ask a number of questions about the morality of the way that businesses and individuals with something to gain respond to Death-Cast. Though the novel never comes down explicitly on whether these responses are wholly good or bad…