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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
Zoe received her call from Death-Cast at 12:34 a.m. last night. She just moved to New York to start at NYU and was feeling lonely, but she turned to the Last Friend app. She messaged Mateo first but then found Gabriella. Zoe and Gabriella avoid two boys as they hop on the train. They stop when they see a package on a seat—it might be a bomb. Since Gabriella didn’t receive the alert, she’s fearless and picks up the package. She’s thrilled that it’s a book because she loves drawing on paper. Gabriella shares a secret: she’s the “Batman of the Manhattan graffiti world.” She says that she does graffiti promoting Last Friend and that she leaves tags for the Last Friends she’s met. Zoe asks if Gabriella will leave her tag on Broadway so she can have her name there even if it won’t be in lights.
Zoe and Gabriella are likely the girls that Mateo and Rufus almost bumped into leaving the train—while Gabriella’s graffiti is, in all likelihood, what Rufus was looking at when he signed up for Last Friend. Everything that Mateo and Rufus do and every person they meet is somehow connected, which drives home how interconnected human life is in general. Though it’s impossible to grasp all the possible consequences of one’s actions, this makes it clear that those actions will nevertheless affect someone else—and hopefully, they’ll help that person connect to others.
Themes
Passengers stare. A gorgeous black woman offers her condolences to Zoe. Gabriella tries to offer Zoe the book, but Zoe refuses to take it. She tells Gabriella to keep it as a gift from her Last Friend. The black woman speaks up again and says that she’s happy that Zoe found a Last Friend on her End Day, and that Gabriella does graffiti. The girls decide to open the book together. Zoe hopes that Gabriella keeps being a Last Friend for Deckers, since life, and End Days, shouldn’t be lived alone.
Zoe gets at one of the book’s main points when she insists that life shouldn’t be lived alone. In extreme circumstances, when people feel alone, they can find themselves like Deirdre or like Vin, ready to kill themselves or others. Connecting with other people, the novel insists, is the only way to live and live meaningfully.
Themes
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