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.
PrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The Living begins with the narrator, Shy, standing alone on the Honeymoon Deck of a Paradise cruise ship. Shy is a Mexican American teenager from Otay Mesa, San Diego, a town “right down there by the border” (3). He has taken a summer job with the cruise line, and although he finds the work to be menial, the money is “game-changing good” (1). He hopes to help his mother financially, buy himself “some new gear and a pair of kicks” (1), and be able to afford to take a girl out on an expensive dinner date. Paradise cruise ships are the height of luxury, meaning almost every passenger is extremely wealthy.
As part of his job as a “Towel Boy at the Lido Deck pool by day” and “Water Boy at night” (1), Shy has become accustomed to catering to rich, arrogant passengers; one such man approaches him, and Shy describes him as “middle-aged and balding, dressed in a suit two sizes too small” (2). The man, who introduces himself as David Williamson, is visibly uncomfortable and starts talking to Shy about his life as the “top scientist in my field” and “cofounder of my own business” (2). He angrily rebuts Shy’s attempts to flatter him and asks him instead to “remember this cowardly face” (3). He implies that he has betrayed Shy in some way and says that he left a letter in a cave explaining everything. David says that he doesn’t know how to go on living with “all this blood” on his hands (3).
Shy is distracted by two women who appear on the deck and turns to offer them water. He then notices David climbing over the railing out of the corner of his eye. Shy reaches out to catch David just before he jumps but isn’t strong enough to pull him back onto the ship. David’s suit tears, and he falls into the ocean to his death. Shy is struck by the sheer size of the ocean and its indifference to human life: “The ocean still whispering, same as before. Like nothing whatsoever has happened, and nothing will” (7).
Prologue Analysis
The Prologue introduces Shy, the teenage protagonist of the book, and quickly lays out several key aspects of his personality. Most immediately apparent is his age and the struggle between childishness and maturity that plays a part in his complex inner monologue. He spends a great deal of time thinking about and staring at girls and fantasizes about being able to take “a female” out to an expensive dinner. At the same time, his more juvenile tendencies bump up against the responsibility he has been shouldering since a very young age. He thinks about helping his mother financially before he thinks about spending the money on himself, and he is willing to leave home for weeks at a time to help support his family.
While the subjects of race and class are not the whole focus of the Prologue, this is where de la Peña lays the groundwork to build on those themes over time. Shy feels disdain for the rich passengers on the cruise—“if Shy’s learned anything during his first six days on the job, it’s that luxury cruise passengers don’t want anything real. They want a pat on the back” (2)—and recognizes the firm power imbalance in place.
The Prologue is also where Shy’s relationship with the ocean, and with nature as a personified entity, is established. Whenever there is a lull in the action of Shy’s life on the ship, he is reminded of the vast and uncaring sea that surrounds him. Shy regularly imagines that the ocean is whispering to him: “The ocean talks to you. Especially at night. Whispering voices that never let up, not even when you sleep. It can start to mess with your head” (1). His anxiety gives the ocean a mystical quality, and that paired with his grandmother’s fear of sharks—and his own imaginings of “slithering electric eels [and] whales the size of apartment buildings” (4)—establishes the setting as deeply hostile. Then, as if to prove his anxieties right, Shy watches the ocean take a life and is powerless to do anything about it. Shy will continue to struggle against these twin fronts as the plot progresses, facing nature on one side and humanity on the other.
Related Titles
By Matt de la Peña
