57 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine ApplegateThe Last: Endling #1
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Discarding Limitations and Reinventing the Self
The novel begins with Byx describing her failings as a dairne. Byx feels she is too small, too impetuous, and too inept at many of the things her siblings can do well. Byx often does not trust her instincts or her actions, for she feels that they often fall short of what she should be able to accomplish. Whenever Byx must make an important decision, these doubts become a central issue to her decisions, often causing her to hesitate to do something brave or heroic. In the beginning, when Byx first sees Tobble struggling in his boat, she hesitates to help him due to misgivings about disobeying her mother, and this moment of indecision leads to the poachers catching her on the side of the cliff. Once she is in trouble, however, Byx acts without thinking and heroically saves Tobble from drowning while saving herself from the poacher’s arrow. Byx could simply glide right past Tobble, but instinct makes her save the small creature even though her own life is in danger.
As the novel progresses, Byx continues to doubt her bravery, but whenever her friends are in danger, such as when the Knight of the Fire first comes after them, Byx doesn’t hesitate to draw the knight away from Gambler by jumping on the Vallino’s back and serving as a decoy. Nor does she hesitate when the Pale Guard attacks her companions or when she develops a plan to use the Knight of the Fire eliminate the Pale Guard. While Byx may be plagued by feelings of inadequacy, she nonetheless proves over and over again that her instincts will not allow her to fail those she cares about.
Khara is another character who struggles with her identity, but in a different way. Khara is part of a family that was once great but has been shamed by betrayal and defeat in war. Khara holds strong to the honor of her family name even though she must hide that name from those around her. In fact, Khara often hides her gender because she cannot hunt or fight as a girl despite being excellent at these skills. Khara must completely deny who she is in order to survive in the Murdano’s kingdom. As the novel progresses, Khara trusts Byx, Tobble, and Gambler enough to tell them truth, but she continues to hide parts of herself from Luca, perhaps sensing (as Byx does) that Luca is not always completely truthful. Later, Khara is surprised when Renzo admits to knowing all about her family history, for this moment shows her that she doesn’t always hide her true nature as well as she believes. Renzo’s knowledge and his story about his great-grandfather in the war also suggest a connection between Renzo and Khara that might prove important in the next two novels of the series.
Developing Unlikely Friendships
At the beginning of the novel, Byx describes the six governing species and admits that she has never seen any of the other five of these species. Byx’s life has been very sheltered due to her pack’s fear of being discovered and potentially killed for their soft pelts. When the Murdano’s soldiers kill her pack and Khara saves her, Byx finally meets a human for the first time. This meeting is followed by a trip to Cora di Schola and seeing the wide range of creatures that live there. In just a few days, Byx sees examples of every one of the six governing species and even befriends several.
The friendships that Byx develops begin in many different ways, many of which are steeped in stress or conflict. For example, she meets Tobble while she is being attacked by poachers, and she does not initially intend to keep him as a companion. In fact, in the aftermath of escaping the poachers, Byx tries to get rid of Tobble because she is unsure how to explain to her pack that she has befriended a member of a species that dairnes consider to be prey. However, when she quickly discovers that her pack has been murdered and she is on her own, Tobble’s companionship becomes absolutely vital, as does Khara’s once Byx is assured that the girl does not intend to be her captor. Thus, it is because of Byx’s need for help and companionship that an unwanted companion and captor become her best and closest friends.
Byx’s introduction to a felivet is while she is being held in a cell against her will. Having always been told that felivets hunt and eat dairnes, Byx is wary of this felivet until he expresses concern that his own species is being slowly exterminated just like the dairnes. This leads to the unusual friendship between Byx and Gambler. As they travel together, Byx saves Gambler twice, and Gambler returns the favor for all of Byx’s companions on several occasions. In a similar pattern, Byx initially views the thief, Renzo, as a frightening person who wants nothing more than to take Khara’s possessions. However, Byx ends up saving Renzo’s life and learning that he is an honorable boy despite his dishonest profession.
The development of these friendships is important not only because of the many times they save each other’s lives, or the important mission they set themselves upon, but also because as an endling (the very last of a species), Byx has no family and no one that she can count on. These new friends therefore become a family to Byx, providing her with the support and love she is missing and the strength to help her expose the Murdano’s scheme to murder whole species in his obsessive pursuit of power as he prepares to wage a war.
Overcoming Prejudice
Society often develops opinions and preconceived notions about a particular group of people or animals that informs how a person might think or act around that particular group. In this novel, Byx comes to the human world with preconceived notions about not only humans but also the other five governing species as well. For example, she believes that felivets are bloodthirsty creatures who hunt and kill all forms of animals, including dairnes. For this reason, Byx is particularly afraid of felivets and remains wary of Gambler upon her first meeting with him. Yet, despite her initial beliefs regarding these creatures, she decides to trust Gambler and to include him in her growing group of companions to try to find answers to the extinction of some of the six governing species.
The same can be said of Byx’s feelings for humans. Byx has been taught that humans kill dairnes for their pelt, but Khara does the opposite by rescuing Byx and saving her from a misguided attempt to seek revenge for her pack’s deaths. Likewise, although Tobble is a member of a species that Byx’s family once cooked and ate, she never considers doing such a thing to Tobble, who soon proves himself to be a steadfast companion. Byx’s shifting view of the creatures around her occurs as a result of her direct interactions with them, something that most humans do not take the time to do when it comes to certain preconceived notions about other species or even members of their own species.
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By Katherine Applegate
