Life after death, is there more than this?

Seth is drowning. It’s winter in Washington State. The waters are frigid and the currents are rough. As he is thrown around the water he regrets his most recent decisions. He wished he had said goodbye to the people he loved, he wished he told someone where he was, and he wished he never jumped into the water where he would die. The waters rush him back towards the rugged rockwork of the shore, his head crashes into the rocks and his skull cracks open. What if life was more than this, more than just existence, more than just death? His last few moments are the first few pages of the book and set the stage for a grim dystopian story to unfold. 

“More Than This,” written by Patrick Ness, is a sci-fi, dystopian, mystery novel that hints at themes of tragedy, trauma, and existentialism. We follow Seth Wearing, a 16-year-old boy from Southern England who commits suicide after his American dream is shattered, and finds out his life is more than it seems.

Seth then wakes up in a mysteriously nostalgic place. As Seth learns to survive in this new world he begins to remember the trauma of his life that he had initially repressed. The world seems like it was made just for him to suffer.  He wants to remember more, but is the pain worth the knowledge? Is this his own personal Hell? 

The idea of solitude is a representation of hell. People are sociable creatures and being a part of society is a part of living. Although, when we don’t feel as though we fit into the rigid ideologies of human life, living can become a chore. Making ourselves change to feel like we belong.

“More Than This,” is an insightful idea of what the world has become and how we, as humans, survive in an ever-ruining world; how we can decide not to recognize the problems of our lives, and instead create a false reality to live in instead. In a time when ignorance is bliss, forgetting tragedy for happiness always seems worthwhile, but maybe that makes reality hell, and hell reality itself.