Essay On Mateo Torrez's 'They Both Die In The End'

The character Mateo Torrez from They Both Die in the End By Adam Silvera is a very relatable character for many people including myself. To start, Mateo is a very quiet person and doesn’t have a large group of friends, but in his opinion just like mine it is better to have a few good friends who you really know instead of a lot of people you do not know very well. Another reason I would say I can relate to Mateo is because he wants to experience lots of things but is scared of the outcome and the what if’s that are possible. He’s too tight inside and doesn’t know how to loosen up because it takes a lot of work to untwist the knots anxiety might be building up inside. In that sense I feel I can connect to Mateo, not because I'm too tight inside

Although Mateo sometimes wished he had a larger group of friends, his best friend Lidia is almost like a sister to him and he would rather have her than a huge group of friends he does not know very well. Throughout the book Mateo makes a new friend named Rufus who he meets through the last friend app. Something Mateo says that is very memorable and true is “You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk.”(Silvera). I think this explains how Mateo feels about friendship really well and how quality of quantity in friendships is important. He is essentially saying that you will have some friends who come and go but your true friends, the ones that will stick by you no matter what, are the people who are most important in your life and the ones you would do anything for. For this reason, this is one of the reasons I feel I can connect and relate to Mateo, because we both value quality over quantity in our friendships, and enjoy having really close

Once Mateo gets the death cast call early in the morning September 5, he starts to regret all the missed opportunities he had and things he wanted to do like travelling around the world and never putting himself out there enough to make more friends. An example of Mateo feeling this way in the book is when he says “The number one person I’ll miss the most is Future Mateo, who maybe loosened up and lived.”(Silvera 9). Although Mateo feels this way he decides he will spend his end day facing these fears in the safest way possible by trying something new like virtual skydiving and visiting the World Travel Arena with Rufus. “Twelve hours ago I received [a] phone call telling me I’m going to die today. The most important goodbye is the one I said to Past Mateo, who I left behind at home when my Last Friend accompanied me into a world that has it out for us.” (Silvera 49). This quote is basically Mateo saying how he left his closed off, uptight self at home when he left his apartment, and is showing how he improved himself on his last day. So, I can connect to Mateo because he holds himself back from participating in things that might seem a little scary to him, but just like Mateo did, I have also started to step out of my comfort zone and start to try new