This article contains spoilers for the video game and the series adaptation.
What turns an artwork into a classical masterpiece? Answers to this question vary, and hardly do people agree on the same criteria. Some would consider that a classical masterpiece is one that succeeds in maintaining its highly artistic value, thus saying that the most important criterion for a work to be a classic is for it to pass the test of time. But on the other hand, others argue that the work must be revolutionary, and able to redefine the value of art itself, so in their perspective, a classic is something that challenges the mainstream in the field and paves the way for newer forms.
Between the two criteria, we see that the immortal works of art meet all the conditions even if they clash. An example to that is films like Chinatown and television series like The Sopranos, in addition to literary works like Ulysses and comics like Akira which are works that everyone can agree on their status as a classic, despite their varying definitions of the word ‘classic’ and the different criteria.
The same goes for video games; the artworks that form a blend of interactive gaming and visual narratives to offer unique story experiences. Here, we are introduced to The Last of Us, a masterpiece made by writer Neil Druckmann, and game director Bruce Straley. It is a classical masterpiece that transformed the video game industry and took us on one of the most brilliant artistic experiences ever. This wasn’t just a video game; it was an epic, an odyssey, a transformative journey that humanity undertook.
The same goes for video games; they are a unique form of artistic expression that blend interactivity and visual storytelling to create compelling narrative experiences. One shining example is The Last of Us, the masterpiece created by writer Neil Druckmann and director Bruce Straley. This classic work represents a qualitative shift in game production, delivering one of the greatest artistic experiences ever committed to the medium. The Last of Us is not simply a video game, but an epic odyssey – a transformative journey about the transformative journeys that human beings undertake.
- The Context and the Story
(This part discusses the events of the first episode in the series, and the equivalent chapters from the video game)
- Humanity on the verge of extinction— The context:
The events of The Last of Us begin mere hours before the collapse of the world as we know it…
A fungal infection sweeps through many nations and disrupts their security systems, causing them to fall apart one by one. No one knows how it started, but one thing that everyone can see is how people infected with this disease turn into creatures devoid of willpower and humanity; they resemble monsters more than humans, which, in the eyes of those who hold power, makes them a threat to the security of the community. Governments are forced to take urgent action in these critical moments that will determine the fate of humanity, as the fast-spreading pandemic had to be contained at any cost, but it was done in the most horrendous way possible!
In the introductory scenes, we are introduced to Joel and his young daughter Sarah in the last few hours preceding the world’s collapse. It was not just any other day, it was Joel’s birthday! Everything during that scene is depicted in a highly impressive and cinematic resolution: from the animation to the acting, and the narrative as a whole. Through silent details, we are exposed to the unspoken reality between the characters, Joel’s wife is absent, and that makes us wonder: Where is Sarah’s mother? The lingering question of how long she’s been gone, coupled with whether he raised his daughter alone, forces us to reconsider Joel and Sarah’s relationship. A mother’s absence leaves a void that a father, no matter how dedicated, can’t fully fill, creating a constant sense of incompleteness
It is a situation in which you can do your best all day, only to be burdened with the idea of not having done enough at the end of the day; a haunting concern that plagues all parents. We see this dynamic spontaneously manifesting in Joel and Sarah’s quaint birthday celebration filled with humor, warmth, and kind-hearted guilt. This is how the journey in The Last of Us starts, with a microscopic focus on the drama of human relationships.
The first blow for Joel and Sarah comes when an infected person breaks into their house, and at that moment, neither the father’s threats nor the girl’s screams can stop the infected from attacking them, thus forcing Joel to kill him to protect Sarah. In a panicked state, we see Joel telling his daughter that “There is something bad going on… we have got to get outta here.” But the world outside of the walls of their house was no safer, in fact, it was more terrifying; the ‘infection’ was haunting humanity, chasing people on the streets and roads. It is a hellish scene, painting for us a state of panic, a fear of complete destruction. In this scene, the game allows us to take control over Joel in the journey of finding safety for Sarah; nothing but a father carrying his daughter amidst the screams, accidents, explosions, and chaos.
When The Last of Us with its interactive nature puts us in such a position, it takes us beyond the issue of emotionally investing in the fates of the characters and pushes us to be one with them. We, the players, are Joel, and in that moment, our biggest fears are in the infected creatures chasing after us. We hear their cries from each direction, and the closer they get to us, the farther our hopes of survival go.
When we finally get to the dead-end, with no chance to escape the infected, we suddenly find solace and relief when an armed military official clears the danger by shooting at it. We can take a breath of relief as we stop, the monstrous screams ending, only to hear the father assuring his daughter that they are now safe. But there is something worrying about the armed soldier; his weapon is still aimed at Joel and Sarah!
We see him taking commands on his radio device, but we are unaware of what the other end is saying, yet as soon as we hear the soldier trying to justify the situation by explaining that there is “a little girl” our worries spiral into a bigger fear. We do not need to hear what the commands are saying to realize the strategies that the decision makers are implementing, because they are revealed by the soldier’s finger pulling the trigger without uttering a word.
There are no exceptions in trying to contain the pandemic. Everyone must be eliminated.
Joel’s reaction upon realizing what was happening was unfortunately slower than the bullets that sent him tumbling to the ground, only for him to get up and realize that the bullet shot through Sarah’s frail body. The father embraces his bleeding daughter as she cries in his arms, trying to assure her and himself that the injury is not serious, but the reality is harsher than we wish; Sarah is dying! Moments pass and our feelings conflict between fear and anger, Sarah’s crying stops, and her tears mix with her blood as she lay lifelessly in her father’s lap, who had always felt like he had been neglectful towards her. Now, he fails, for the last time; failing to save her from the monstrosity of this world.
But what monstrosity are we referring to here? Sarah was not the victim of an infected creature devoid of willpower, rather, she was the victim of a human being with free willpower to act as he saw fit. This is a brutality that cannot be understood simply by taking humanity away. If we want to grasp the nature and the root of the violence that caused Sarah’s death then we must return to mankind, to man himself as the self that can commit atrocities.
From the introductory scenes, The Last of Us assures us that mankind is the core of its stories and themes, showing us stories about humans that are forced to live with the ghosts of their collapsed worlds.
- An odyssey over the ruins of society… The story:
The actual events of the story begin 20 years after the world’s collapse.
After Sarah takes her last breaths in his arms, he is reborn from that moment, carrying with him all the characteristics he earned from the tragic moment. When we meet him again, as a man with graying hair, stripped of compassion; in his expression, we see a reflection of the fallen civilization (Cold… Petrified… and devoid of any emotions). His brother, Tommy, is the last of his family, and the link connecting him to his past life, a memory before the world’s collapse. As for the rest, they are the ghosts that haunt him as a reminder of the failure and weakness of humanity. Especially Sarah, reminders of her constantly haunt him, in every corner he goes, and in all his dreams when he closes his eyes; like a scar that has not healed after so many years.
As if losing his daughter wasn’t a burden enough, The Last of Us throws us into the heart of Joel’s worry about Tommy, his brother who vanished into the perilous world outside (with the difficulty of communication after the fall of all laws and regulations; and the enforcement of the jungle law.)
We watch as his fraternal instincts push him to seek out his younger brother’s whereabouts, but in those moments where time stood still, answers came with a price, like exchanging scarcities and resources (food, medication, weapons, etc). For the past two decades, Joel has been a secret smuggler within the secure quarantine zones. This gave him a bargaining chip: “Cigarettes or sleeping pills? Give me what I want first.”
In the universe within The Last of Us we find that the communities scattered into quarantine areas are being run by a tyrannical regime that is being opposed by a radical party aiming for its downfall, and amidst the political chaos of arrests, executions, and explosions, Joel seems to only think of his own better good away from any alliances. It is revealed to us that we are not facing a hero in the traditional sense of noble morals; he is just a man trying to protect the people closest to him by any means necessary: first, out of his instincts, and second, out of his fear of failure.
So, when his interests collide with the agenda of the radical party, he is charged with the task of smuggling ‘cargo’ outside of the quarantine zone, in exchange for leads to finding Tommy. At this point, the game hooks us by introducing us to the special ‘cargo’ which the story focuses on for the rest of the upcoming chapters, surprisingly it is a little girl called Ellie; humanity’s last hope of rebuilding the world… and the last hope of finding a vaccine to reverse the infection.
Our mission is simply to take Ellie from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ no more, and no less. Heading in an odyssey over the ruins of society where tyrannical regimes, rebellious groups, religious cults, and cannibals, along with millions of infected are all trying to kill you! Seems like an easy task, doesn’t it?
- When Our Ghosts Come to Life
(In this part we will discuss the events of the sixth and eighth episodes in the series, and the equivalent chapters from the video game)
One thing that sets “The Last of Us” apart from anything else is its clever use of the complexities of the human psyche to create more ruthless fears than just the dangers of its brutal world. There is something about Ellie, about her age, and her frail body that evokes the image of Sarah’s ghost in Joel’s mind. We notice his defense mechanism reacting towards the young girl with a cruel cold attitude; though deep down he holds a part of the warmth he had towards his departed daughter.
In one of the heavy dialogue scenes between the two, Ellie asks him about what keeps him going in this miserable world, to which he replies that “family” is his only drive to go through this effort. Ellie is perplexed by his answer and adds in confusion “I’m not family” only for Joel to confirm her statement and say “No, you’re cargo.” This cruelly cold statement is what Joel tries to convince himself! He does his best to prevent Sarah’s ghost from coming back to life in the form of Ellie because he is aware of the dangers that lie ahead; there is nothing scarier in this world to him than seeing his daughter in another person and failing to protect her again. It is not easy; Joel is still a father, and his parental instincts will not allow him to keep Ellie away, even if he does not admit it.
Over time, we witness Joel’s internal conflict increasing the closer his relationship with Ellie is. That guarded man, hardened by the rigors of life from the beginning of the story begins to shed his armors to expose his true self at the end. His fatherly instincts manifest in panic attacks whenever danger gets close to her. Joel’s fears are not verbally expressed until he finds Tommy again on the way to the facility that promised to extract the vaccine from Ellie’s immune body. We hear him tearfully confess to his brother about the nightmares that haunt him “I just know when I wake up, I’ve lost something. I’m failing in my sleep. It’s all I do. It’s all I’ve ever done, is fail her again and again.” The brilliance in this dramatic scene is that his words refer to Sarah and Ellie, which allows us to feel Joel’s fear in our hearts. As if we were the ones grieving the loss of the first child and getting attached to our love for the second one.
The Last of Us invests in the duality of ‘Love and Death’ as an emotional currency in raising the bet of what remains from the story, and it asks: What is the value of love in a world that is overtaken by death? We can say that it is invaluable to whoever already had it and then lost it. In other words, when Joel welcomed Ellie in his heart, he exposed his vulnerability to the possibility of reliving the nightmare of losing his daughter again, which would make his life hell on earth. Once he realizes that (after Ellie saves his life and gets kidnapped as a result) his fears turn into something terrifying, awakening a monster within himself, we see him torturing and killing people in cold blood to save Ellie, his ‘daughter.’
In this penultimate chapter we find ourselves questioning Joel’s darkening morals; was all the killing and bloodshed justified? Some would say yes, it was necessary to protect Ellie, who was the only hope humanity had of finding a cure. But The Last of Us shocks us one more by presenting a dilemma to the equation… Does Joel even care about the rest of humanity and their future?
- No Heroes in this World
(In this part, we will discuss the events of the final episode, and the equivalent chapters from the video game)
Throughout this narrative epic, both the writer Neil Druckmann and the director Bruce Straley build on a dramatic plot based on the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and the concluding chapter of the story presents us with one of the most complex ethical dilemmas in the history of narrative works. Having finally reached the hospital where the antidote for the fungal infection is to be extracted, we catch snippets of conversation from members of the revolutionary militia party. Recall how we agreed to transport their special ‘cargo’ in those early chapters? They say that Ellie is ready in the operation room, Joel apprehensively asks why she is undergoing an operation. The answer that follows is what turns everything upside down; extracting the cure from Ellie’s body ultimately means… her death!
Joel is unwilling to sacrifice his daughter, and he demands that they find another immune person, but they firmly tell him that there is no going back at this moment, and that if he acts against orders, it will get him killed. It became clear then that they had underestimated Joel’s danger. Forcing him into a difficult situation was a grave mistake. In this scene, for the last time, the game allows us to take control over Joel’s body as he turns into a rampaging killing machine, pulling us from our seats into the bloody hospital corridors. After he wipes out the entirety of the militia group in a massacre, we finally reach the operation room and find Ellie who is unconscious on the operation bed, ready to undergo the operation.
The doctor stands between Joel and Ellie, and it is as if he is bargaining with death itself; when Joel lost Sarah, her death was brutal and meaningless, but now, death offers something in exchange to Ellie’s death… saving humanity.
For Joel, humanity doomed itself two decades ago, when that soldier received the orders and killed Sarah.
Thus, with a single bullet, Joel destroyed whatever hope was left in finding a cure. He carried Ellie over the doctor’s corpse, and after stealing a vehicle from the hospital, he made his way back to live with his brother Tommy.
As they are on the road, when Ellie regains consciousness and asks him about what happened, Joel lies and tells her that there were many others who were immune, and that the medical team failed in extracting the cure, he wraps up his lies by covering up his atrocities as the work of some attackers that came after them.
The story ends with Ellie’s attempting to accept her new reality, which is the fact that she is no longer humanity’s hope in rebuilding the world.
In The Last of Us, there are no heroes, and even if there were, then Joel is definitely not one of them.
- What Does “The Last of Us” Say About Life After Loss?
When I first ventured in Joel and Ellie’s adventure back in 2014, I didn’t know about the kind of ‘loss’ that they suffered from deep within, but I felt that The Last of Us presented us with a metaphorical prophecy of what we would suffer from when our worlds collapse, and we become surrounded by the ghosts of the ones we lost. The melodies composed by Gustavo Santaolalla evoke a sense of the inevitability of destruction and loss. This is communicated through the titles of his musical scores, which he specially arranged for this story. Repeatedly, he tells us that All Gone, reminding us of the impermanence of what we think will last forever.
Now, after all these years, I know what ‘loss’ is, and I have tasted its bitterness. I realized that the collapse of our worlds isn’t necessarily because of epidemics and World War III, it can be because of an urgent call in the middle of the night or being on a road with a reckless driver. The outside world is not separated from our experience of it; I live in it, I am aware of it with all of my senses, but I do not know more than what I experience, which means that the shocks and traumas that fragment our cognitive horizons are the necessary part to the collapse of our world. It will not be because of the fallen security systems or stock markets, but because my interaction with the world and its subjects will be imprinted. I am not talking about a collapse in the catastrophic sense, I am talking about a philosophical collapse, a phenomenological collapse where the ghosts of our collapsed worlds affect our lives wherever we go.
Looking back on Joel, his world did not collapse with the outbreak, it did when Sarah was killed; it is that moment in which her ghost began to haunt him and affect his interactions with the world. The same applies to us; life’s traumas, and the loss of our loved ones, our dreams, and ourselves, are what generate the ghost of a traumatic experience that will affect our view of the world and our interaction with it.
The Last of Us comes with a particularly important message: we should not ignore the ghosts of those we lost in this life because they will leave unhealing scars in our hearts, on the contrary, we should come to terms with their absence and the presence of their ghosts in our hearts to lead a peaceful life.
In the end, let us all listen to Gustavo Santaolalla’s message in the most beautiful score he composed “Allowed to be Happy” and let us be reminded that despite the ‘loss’ … there will always be a hope for happiness.
T1700
