The Last Book In The Universe

Choxbars (and to a lesser extent, all edibles) are a symbol of wealth in this text, by means of counteracting starvation with junk food. The majority of people in the Urb are living with hunger, while proovs exist in luxury without needing to think about where their next meal will come from. Even families like Charly and Kay don’t hesitate to accept handouts of edibles, and mobs of people come to get free food from Lanaya whenever she appears in the latches. When Little Face follows Spaz and Ryter on their adventure, Ryter points out to Spaz: “You’re the one who fed him […] The poor child has been hungry all his life, so it’s no wonder he’s fastened on you, Mr. Choxbar” (61). Little Face is so fixated on the treat of choxbars that “chox” becomes his first (and only) word for the majority of the text, and he uses this one word to convey an array of meanings and emotion states. For example, when Little Face finds the way down from the Pipes, he gets excited, “shouting, ‘Chox! Chox!’ which I guess is his name for me, or maybe just a way of saying, I did it!’” (62).

While fire is a symbol for danger and chaos throughout the book, it also serves as a motif for class structure and its disintegration. When Spaz finds himself far from home after wandering in the night, there are fires on every corner: “A place like this, you stick to the shadows and try not to be seen, because if they don’t know you the locals will assume you’re enemy, and most of the time they’re right” (37). When Spaz tries to give Little Face back to the stacks but instead gets menaced by ‘boxers and ends up having a seizure, there are fires glowing to keep the wild animals away. In the third latch, Ryter, Spaz, and Little Face observe the horizon on fire upon climbing out of the Pipe. In the least explained of the latches, hungry mobs are about to tear Lanaya apart when the trio find her. The people are even more animalistic and desperate than they were in Mongo’s latch. Upon returning to Billy’s latch, fires accompany the rioters that come to wheel Ryter for their lack of access to probes. The pages of Ryter’s book are also fed to the fire, symbolizing both memory loss and the disintegration of society into chaos. In the Zone, known as a “safe place” for proovs, there are “[n]o people, no buildings, no rubble, no fire, no smoke, no nothing” (91). When Lotti Getts orders them out of the takvee upon entering her latch, she threatens to set the vehicle on fire.