The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey – Theme

Trust is the Key to the Survival of Humanity

In this novel, the main theme is constantly reappearing in different situations, and I believe that this is the message of the book that the author wants to convey to the reader. Because throughout the novel you can clearly see that the importance of the characters' trust of each other, is very significant and in a lot of cases it was the only way for them to survive the alien invasion.

Cassie, short for Cassiopeia, is challenged the most in the issue of trust. Her plan to stay alive is to trust no one, which helps her but also makes it even harder when she meets Evan Walker. In this world you really don’t know who to trust since the fourth wave brought the silencers, aliens in form of humans, created to trick the human race and assassinate as many of them as possible. When Cassie has to survive on her own with no one to help her, she barely makes it when she gets shot by a silencer and almost freezes to death out in the bitter cold with no shelter to protect her from the freezing winter. When she wakes up in a warm room and has no idea where she is, all her trusting instincts are put on trial when she has to decide whether to trust this handsome young man, or not. During this time she has to let go of her old ways of thinking and learn how to trust again, and come to understand that not all beings want to harm her.

In Ben Parish’s case, he is put in the opposite situation. His challenge is also to trust or not to trust, as he finds himself as a soldier in a humongous military base, which in a way almost seems too good to be true. Unfortunately that’s exactly what it is. Hundreds of surviving children under the age of 18 are brought to the base, but no one really suspects that something might not be right. In the hard course of training to become coldhearted lethal soldiers, they put their trust in their commanders, believing that they’re fighting for a good cause and that they’re being trained to kill the enemy. Although in reality, the aliens are tricking the children into trusting them, so that they can turn the humans against humans, without the aliens having to eradicate the human race themselves. By doing this, they create the 5^th wave, training human beings to kill other innocent human beings, without them knowing what they’re actually doing. So in this case scenario we learn that you have to be very cautious with who you trust.  When Ben and the squad are out on their first mission after graduating, they are being tested by the undercover aliens. This is the point when Ringer, the tough and skilled dark-haired girl in the squad, actually figures out the whole scam about them killing the bad ones, and realizes what’s actually going on. At first, Ben doesn’t know how to react to this and gets really confused, and doesn’t know what to believe. In one moment, he is dangerously close to killing his friend because he finds it almost too hard to believe that what she’s saying is true. This is an example of how severe it can get if you trust the wrong people, but fortunately he does the right choice, to believe that what she’s telling him is the truth.

There are also other symbols of how trust is so important for the remaining survivors of the earth. An example of this is when Cassie thinks to herself “You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope.” By her saying this, we can clearly come to a conclusion that if they can’t trust one another, there is no hope, and without hope you have nothing. Hand in hand with trust, the importance of promises forms the foundation of trust itself. Both Cassie and Ben exchange different objects with Sammy to signify their promise of coming back for him. In Cassie’s case, Sammy gives her his beloved teddy bear so that she would return it to him when she would reunite with him again. This teddy bear, “Bear”, plays a big part in the book which I truly believe has a deeper meaning behind it, which means you would have to read between the lines. This object constantly reminds the reader about her promise to her little brother and his trust and faith in her returning, which keeps his spirits up. It can also be seen in the same way with the locket that Ben gives to Sammy. The only difference was simply that Ben was the one giving the item to Sam, instead of the other way around. When he was wearing the locket around his neck, he would be reminded of the promise he had been given every time he looked down upon it. So by these promises represented by the objects, we can see how they’re built upon trust and therefore how important it is for us. As mentioned earlier in this paragraph, without trust, there will be no hope and if Sammy wasn’t promised these things, he would be without hope. Thus, he would be left with nothing, because hope is what gives us the strength to continue living our lives, no matter the conditions and circumstances.

In summary we can conclude that it’s extremely important to be able to trust, but the risk of it is of course that you could end up trusting the enemy, which was what happened to Ben. Although in Cassie’s circumstances, she struggles to let go of not letting herself trust anyone. Finally she slowly begins to accept Evan’s true identity, and this leads to her actually helping both Ben and Sammy getting out of the collapsing military base which saves their lives. From this we learn how trusting others in fact can be the key to the survival of humanity. So with the theme and message of the novel, I believe that Yancey wants the reader to give this an extr...