The Last White Man: A Novel

This section explores family relations as they intersect with Loss and Mourning. Both Anders and Oona have lost a parent. Anders feels the loss of his mother sharply, as she had been his greatest supporter. Oona’s loss of her father is compounded by the death of her brother, who had been lost for years to his substance use disorder. Neither Anders nor Oona are close to their remaining parent, yet the necessity of moving home allows them to create strong and loving ties. Anders is estranged from his father because he is too much like his deceased mother. Oona distances herself from her mother as her extremism grows. Anders’s father proves that blood ties are stronger than anything else when he protects his son, who is now a person of color, from the dangers outside. This is particularly significant because Anders’s father holds racist beliefs, and Anders believes that he would have been part of the mob. Further, because of his father’s debilitating illness, he must rely on Anders’s care, drawing them even closer together. Anders is willing to risk his own safety by leaving the house to illegally buy medicine to help ease his father’s pain; previously, he had hidden completely. Meanwhile, Oona’s past beliefs, which sometimes overlapped with the beliefs of her mother, begin to crumble as she too begins caretaking for her mother. Her mother’s world, built on Social Media and Conspiracy Theories, is starting to shatter as a result of sporadic internet access, as well as the growing reality of the increasing number of changes. This suggests that, without access to the internet and various online communities, people are forced to confront the realities around them and abandon conspiracy theories that largely thrive from an active community of users. As such, the individuals themselves are less powerful, and so too are their conspiracy theories.

The Last White Man holds certain likenesses to existential literature. For example, the scene of the two men of color shooting each other conjures questions of identity and the meaning of life, as well as evoking feelings of alienation, all of which are common to existential literature. Anders and Oona both face these concerns in the text, as they both build a level of acceptance to their changes. Anders, however, arrives at his acceptance slowly and steadily, but his acceptance of his change marks a complete shift in his character arc. He goes from extreme anger to acceptance, which is partly influenced by his father’s acceptance of him, thus highlighting the impact of family beliefs on the self. Meanwhile, Oona embraces change in a non-linear way, first sleeping with the changed Anders and later altering her skin in photos and with makeup. While these actions take place with the knowledge that she will eventually change, as everyone around her is changing, they also represent a kind of preparation and even excitement. Indeed, when Oona paints her skin, she and her mother agree it is a shameful act, but their reasons for believing this are not explored. Oona’s mother, a white supremacist, likely feels shame because she looks down upon people of color. While Oona might share this reason for shame, Oona’s behavior is reminiscent of blackface, when white performers darkened their faces and enacted caricatures of people of color—a behavior that is widely condemned as racist. Whatever Oona’s motivations are as she prepares for her change, when she does finally change, she quickly accepts it. Contrastingly, when Oona’s mother sees her white daughter in bed with a man of color, she has a visceral reaction, vomiting uncontrollably. This nausea and bodily reaction can be viewed as a kind of identity crisis, as her entire belief system of white supremacy is crumbling before her eyes.

Additionally, uncertainty and ambiguity are expressed through run-on sentences that often stretch to the length of entire paragraphs or pages. While the sentences are long, they are easy to read, as they are comprised of small phrases divided by commas. They are often written in an ambiguous way, saying one thing and then its opposite, representing the rapid mental shifts and non-linear nature of acceptance to change. At times, the narrative uses the literary device of antithesis—the juxtaposition of two opposing entities in parallel structure. These contradictory phrases are used to express a character’s confusion or ambiguity, or even a deliberate unwillingness to explain what is happening within the narrative.

The final image of this chapter is Oona as a snake, shedding its skin to enable it to grow. She has finally changed to a woman of color and is only surprised by how long it has taken for the change to take place. This attitude represents a shift from the previous sections wherein the change was seen as an illness, diminishment, or an external expression of a character’s lack of a clear identity. Now, the metaphor of shedding her old skin is what opens up the space and opportunity for Oona to change and grow as a person, suggesting a positivity that replaces white supremacy.