Characters In The 5th Wave By Rick Yancy

The 5th Wave, written by Rick Yancy, follows the perspectives of many different characters going through five waves of an alien invasion. Cassie, a sixteen year old girl, struggles to survive alone after her parents died and her brother got taken away. She and many other characters struggle through a harsh change in their lives, and yet still find ways to protect the ones they love and stay loyal to each other. A theme the book proposes is that people can change for the worst, but their hearts will remain pure. Cassie is one of the main characters in the book. Different perspectives are written throughout the novel, but Cassie’s perspective took up the most pages, making her a very important protagonist. The book started off with Cassie in

While he got taken into camp, he was trained everyday to be a killer, and yet he still found a way to care and protect. Ben’s life before the invasion was like any other highschool boy. He was a popular highschool football star that hung out with his friends and cared for his sister, Sissy. However, when he got left alone to fend for himself, he got ill and started to break down mentally and physically. Yancy wrote,“He goes to one knee beside the cot, then recoils when he sees my face, the sallow skin, the swollen lips, and the sunken bloodshot eyes that are the telltale signs of the plague” (111). In this scene, Ben was suffering through the virus. He describes how he looks and how the virus affected his life and looks completely. Not long after, he gets taken to the camp where they healed him, but only enough for him to function, not so much back to his normal health, and Yancy wrote,“‘We’re going to need you.’ ‘Need me?’ ‘For the war’”(114). So with Ben’s strength not fully recovered, he now has to be prepared for war. Going to bootcamp everyday wasn’t exactly a dream come true, but even with his team yelling and pushing him around, he still had the heart to save them from the camp, especially Sammy, where the author wrote, “‘We left one behind, I say… ‘Nugget? Zombie, you can’t go back for him. It’s suicide.’ ‘I can’t leave him. I made a promise.’ I start to explain it, … ‘I ran one time,’ I finally say. ‘I’m not running again’” (Yancy 318). The passage showed how Ben, even when he had already escaped from the camp, was willing to go back for Sammy, and save him even if there was the chance he wouldn’t make it back out. Ben went from a highschool superstar, to a team leader for a war, yet still had the same love and loyalty he had before everything