87 pages • 2 hours read
Matt de la PeñaThe Living
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Day 3, Chapters 28-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 28-30 Summary
Hours later, Shy wakes to find that his lifeboat is sinking: The already damaged hull is being rammed by half a dozen sharks circling the boat. Shy beats them back with an oar, but they continue circling. He turns his attention to the hull, repairing it as best he can and bailing out the water once more. The sharks continue circling until he takes up the oar again, hitting one of them hard enough to force it to retreat into the water.
More time passes, and Shy grows increasingly weak with hunger and thirst. After some hours go by, he sees another raft in the distance. He fires a flare and rows toward the other raft, which is also being attacked by sharks and will soon sink. He tries to pull close enough for the passengers of the sinking raft to get across, but the sharks grow more aggressive, and several passengers are dragged into the water, including Toni. Once again, Shy is racked with the guilt of watching someone die in front of him without being able to help: “Shy’s body was shaking uncontrollably. He’d done nothing to help” (161). William Henry and Addison Miller are the only two to make it onto Shy’s raft alive, although William sustains a bite wound on his leg that he will not survive.
Shy, William, and Addison take some time to rest on the boat. The tourniquet around William’s leg does not quite stop the bleeding, and Addison is too deeply traumatized to speak. Shy tries to find some kind of meaning in their predicament but cannot: “When he was a little kid his grandma had taught him to believe there was meaning in everything, even how his old man treated him. But now Shy understood there was nothing” (164). A few uneventful hours pass, during which time William confides in Shy that he suspected his girlfriend would reject his proposal.
Day 3 Analysis
Now that Shy is alone in the ocean, a shift in dramatic conflict takes place. Previously all of Shy’s concerns were interpersonal or internal; he was either in conflict with the people around him or struggling with his own conflicting internal desires and fears. Now, for the most part, those concerns have become irrelevant, replaced by survival as Shy’s first and only priority.
When William Henry and Addison Miller—two passengers who were previously far above Shy in terms of social status— join him on his lifeboat, the three of them are essentially equals. With those barriers removed, the three grow closer; William confides in Shy about his girlfriend planning to reject his proposal, something he never would have considered back on the cruise ship, and Shy responds with compassion that he previously would not have thought William deserved.
This is also the point when circling sharks—foreshadowed in the Prologue by Shy’s grandmother’s fear of sharks—first make their appearance. The sharks are ever-present while Shy struggles to survive in the ocean, constantly battering and biting at his raft and dragging several other survivors to their deaths. The sharks are a constant reminder of the danger Shy faces when he is placed in a struggle against nature itself: There is nothing he can do to ward them off for good; he can only fend them off for as long as he can. The sharks, like the ocean, are another inescapable reminder of the fragility and insignificance of human life.
Shy’s mental health takes a sharp downward turn in these chapters. On the first two days of the voyage, he was depressed and anxious, struggling with feelings of isolation and guilt. Now, however, he is unable to distract himself or find any kind of safety or comfort; he is forced to remain face-to-face with his own mortality for days at a time, and he begins to believe that life is essentially meaningless. Later, this belief that the universe is unfair and uncaring helps bring Shy some peace when he believes he is about to die, but it also threatens to render him numb and hopeless.
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By Matt de la Peña
