A Ship at Sea
Theme in “They Both Die at the End”
The Pop Fic Collection
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera captures the "keenness of feeling" that burns through our teenage years. That feeling is natural because teens hover on the moment's edge, when, without their permission, and not of their volition, what comes next is life and death.
The start of Part 2 of the book shares the John A. Shedd quote, "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." Childhood, whether it is truly safe or not, is safe in that it isn't the child's responsibility. They are still being built. The big decisions, the big mistakes, the big responsibilities, are not theirs. Children can screw up, but they have to screw up pretty badly before there is fallout that both affects the direction of their adult lives and is considered their fault.
As the teen years advance, rebellions and responsibilities increase, but it's dress rehearsal. The teen years are an opportunity to try on the clothes and lines and roles of adulthood. Then there's that moment when the clock ticks over in the dark hours that takes a person from child to adult. Some face it with exhilaration. Others face with dread. Either way, they are launched. The world is not safe for them. And they are responsible, from that second on, for surviving it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Rufus and Mateo, at 17 and 18, straddle the line when young people's lives become legally their own. When their decisions abruptly go from essentially nothing to literally everything. It's the loss of safety. The loss of security. The death of childhood. Whether or not people lose innocence in any other way, at 18 they lose the innocence of the idea that they are precious enough to be safeguarded by a society that legally mandates their care.
For every teenager across America, that knowledge is looming and unspoken and probably not often thought of. There's no wonder that teens feel life and death in every decision. It exists there, in the fractal paths along which each person wends. Teenagers hopefully haven't made those choices. Yet. They don't know if their path will take them to destruction. They only know that every time they make a choice, they take a step farther from their childhood, and a step farther from any of the other people they could have been (as Mateo is sad for future Mateo), and, slowly or quickly, inexorably, a step closer to death.
Mateo is acutely, painfully aware that any small decision he makes could spiral into death and destruction, to the point that he's missed out on life. Rufus's family died, leaving him alone in the world, forcing him to forge a family. That is what adulthood do
es to people. They are alone in their choices. No one else can make them. Mateo tried stalling this by not making choices at all. By living vicariously in video games and hovering in the doorway to adulthood as he hovered in the doorway to the world outside his apartment.
My sister has a saying that follows me:"Time passes anyway." Mateo's childhood was gone anyway. His dad was in a coma. He was alone regardless of trying to stave off the inevitable change to independence and adulthood and responsibility and the inevitability of an end. The vast mystery and isolation of adulthood—of death—came for him. There was no running. Time passes anyway.
