66 pages • 2 hours read
Donna Barba HigueraThe Last Cuentista
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A 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.
Themes
Individual Versus Group Consciousness
The Last Cuentista explores the conflict between individual and group consciousness. There is some merit to the Collective argument that individuals cause all the strife and problems in the world. Dictators and warlords are individuals bent on gaining as much advantage as they can for themselves at the expense of society as a whole. One of the Collective members articulates this philosophy succinctly when he says:
‘Without the Collective, there would only be war and famine. Our unity and agreement on all things ensures we will never return to the ways of conflict.’ He holds up his bioloaf. ‘We will never starve, because the Collective has eliminated diversity and demand for more choices’ (165).
At a later point in the story, Petra evaluates the limits of this viewpoint. She thinks it may be possible to reach the same goal of peace and prosperity without taking such drastic measures. While acknowledging the limits of the society she was born into—one that would have left her on Earth if they knew she had impaired vision—she believes that change can be achieved through embracing diversity and making peace by celebrating our differences. Moreover, she emphasizes the role of learning through history in making a better world: “It’ll be our job to remember the parts we got wrong and make it better for our children and grandchildren” (110).
The Collective wishes to eradicate humanity, hoping that a blank slate will result in a better future. However, exterminating all differences between people is, in effect, eugenics. The author alternately compares the new human race of the Collective to aliens, with their violet eyes and translucent, veiny skin, and Aryans, with their blond, braided hair. With this, Higuera ties the Collective to Nazi Germany and its eugenics projects. By combining Aryan trains with alienness, she emphasizes that these beliefs suck the humanity out of people, leaving them cold and unfeeling, the shells of human beings without the spark that makes them people.
Petra also recognizes the price the future world will pay to maintain this absolute conformity: If sameness becomes a virtue, everyone will be afraid to step out of line. Innovation and creativity become impossible. Petra says, “The old Monitors like Ben were supposed to have the time and space to work on the things they loved. Now it’s all just busy work. Nothing creative or unique; nothing colorful or messy” (131-32). Like the lab-created members of the Collective themselves, everything about the society is purely about function, but this is a shallow existence without the beauty and creativity that constitutes culture.
Essentially, the novel is concerned with defining the role of diversity in a good society. Does the answer lie in eradicating everything that isn’t normative, or is it possible to use diversity as a spur to ever-greater creativity? Chancellor Nyla and her Collective are threatened by difference. Petra’s stories celebrate it. The individual life holds as much value as the life of the greater society. Petra’s valiant stand at the end of the novel proves that one person can make a difference. The novel seems to suggest that differences should be celebrated instead of suppressed or extinguished.
Past Versus Future
Just as the novel sets up a dichotomy between the individual and the group, it also creates a conflict between the past and the future. The destruction of the Earth presents a unique opportunity for a fresh start. What form should the new world take? The Collective paints a radically different picture of an ideal future; because they view human history as an appalling story of murder and greed, they want to eradicate all memory of such behavior. Just as they seek to exterminate the First Arrivers on Sagan, they also aim to wipe the memories of the remaining humans onboard the spacecraft and purge traces of the past from the record of civilization. Only by creating a blank slate can they build a new, ideal, peaceful future.
This nuclear option doesn’t sit well with Petra’s father. Before leaving Earth, he comments on a newscast that shows the nascent Collective making its first appeal to humanity, saying that “I think they’re talking an entirely different kind of survival. Tell me that isn’t frightening” (18). Petra’s father acknowledges that the goal of peace is noble and worth fighting for and that the current society is not perfect. However, he believes that people must learn from the past to create a better, more harmonious future. As a scientist, he acknowledges that good work is built on a foundation of knowledge, not created from scratch.
Caught between these two very different value systems is Petra herself. Unlike her parents, she doesn’t aspire to become a scientist. She wants to be a storyteller, a cuentista. The stories she learns and disseminates are legends from the past. They are figurative representations of how people should act, even though they don’t always live up to ideal behavior. Both Lita and Petra believe that stories from the past contain wisdom that can help guide the future. Petra says, “What the Collective doesn’t understand is by honoring the past, our ancestors, our cultures—and remembering our mistakes—we become better” (258).
Petra gets a chance to forge a different kind of future when she and her band of surviving humans land on Sagan. She is determined to introduce her cuentos to the First Arrivers already there and to embellish and expand the stories that Lita taught her to suit the needs of her listeners. Petra’s new world does not seek to eradicate the past but to bring it forward to help create a better future.
The Heart’s Memories
The Collective uses the En Cognito downloads, or Cogs, to reprogram the minds of the humans in stasis during the voyage to Sagan. The intent is to turn them into worker drones who will serve the needs of the group. Notably, this technology wasn’t invented by the Collective, and the original mission to Sagan intended to install the same botany and geology Cogs in Petra’s programming. However, she was also originally offered the option to have elective Cogs, and her parents’ insistence on her learning survival skills was minor compared to the Collective’s intention to erase all personal memories from the minds of the human travelers. In its zeal to eradicate individuality, the Collective assumed that this task could be accomplished through mental reprogramming. It failed to reckon with emotional and sensory associations, which carry memories of their own.
Petra discovers multiple ways to bypass the Collective’s mental programming by appealing to the Zetas’ other forms of memory. One of these comes from dreaming. Petra watches Zeta-4 having a disturbing dream about a trip to the doctor when she was still a child. Petra wonders, “All of Zeta-4’s memories of Earth should be gone. Even in her dream, how can she remember her mom and going to the doctor?” (119). Petra herself unconsciously taps into Lita’s wisdom in her recurring dreams about an old Aztec legend. She quickly realizes that her cuentos might have a similar effect on the Zeta group and resolves to keep telling the stories, hoping to spark their heart memories of their old lives and families.
The stories stimulate curiosity and imagination in her listeners. Even Voxy, who was bred as a member of the Collective, finds himself pining to live in a world that has stories in it. Aside from dreams and stories, Petra also uses books to awaken memory. She gives her brother the book he was reading just before he went into stasis and is amazed by how quickly he comes back to himself:
I turn again to the page where the orange-and-black monarch sits atop the page like he could take flight at any moment. Javier touches it like he always has. Every. Single. Time. Suddenly the old man before me is my little brother again (248).
Higuera emphasizes that it’s not just art and literature that can forge these connections. Even an object as modest as an old sweatshirt has the magical ability to reconnect the wearer to her past. In erasing human memories, the Collective forgot one vital fact: The heart carries memories that cannot be reprogrammed through a Cog.
