CHAU Jonathan
L3 CCA Groupe 1
The Last of Us, Grief, and Loneliness
For my careful-analysis work, I decided to discuss loneliness and more specifically grief
in relation to a video game called The Last of Us that I played 7 years ago. In my opinion,
loneliness and grief are two of the worst things a human being can experience in their life. In
this game from Naughty Dog, I wanted to explain how, in my opinion, loneliness and grief were
depicted and how it guided the plot and the relationships between the characters.
Since the Covid pandemic and the lockdown, many people coped with the loss of loved
ones. Similarly in The Last of Us, many people died as the world was stricken by a cordyceps
pandemic that turned infected people into some sort of zombies. There was only one known
person who was immune to the virus: Ellie, a teenage girl and Joel’s mission was to smuggle
her to a hospital in Utah to find a cure and create a vaccine.
At the beginning of the game, Joel and his daughter, Sarah were introduced through
their fusional relationship. For Joel’s birthday, Sarah offered him a watch. Later on, when the
pandemic started, Sarah was shot by a military while they were trying to escape their city
invaded by infected people and in a heartbreaking scene, Joel cradled his daughter till her last
breath. Right after this wretched moment, the words “20 years later” were superimposed on
screen. In my view, it implied that Joel stayed in the same state of mind, in the same emotional
state since his daughter’s death: ever since that tragic event, Joel was filled with loneliness and
grief that left a void in his heart and life. While Joel was doing his best to navigate through the
process of grief after the loss of his daughter, it was easier for him to sequester himself from
the rest of the world which led to even more loneliness.
Later, Tess was presented as Joel’s partner in crime but more importantly, she was the
catalyst for Joel’s relationship with Ellie. Knowing how broken Joel was after his daughter’s
death, Tess constantly came up with tasks to distract his friend from his deceased daughter.
Ellie’s appearance in the game forced Joel to make painful comparisons to Sarah and because
Joel couldn’t cope with loss, he didn’t want to get involved with Ellie, to get acquainted with
her: he was reluctant to take any responsibility for her and to be vulnerable again. His
philosophy of “work” was the less he knew, the better. This was true since the very moment he
was tasked with escorting Ellie out of the quarantined zone.
When Tess was bitten and doomed from that moment, she managed to convince Joel to
stop running away from his problems and to carry on with the mission. After her death, Ellie
tried to offer her condolences to Joel, but the latter replied, “You can’t bring up Tess – ever”
and this shows again how hard it was for him to process grief. If Joel didn’t open to Ellie later
on like he did, he would have ended up just like Bill (i.e., an unstable and paranoid man ruled
by fear and distrust that pushes away the closest to him).
Throughout their journey, Joel and Ellie bonded like a father and his daughter, as if Ellie
was a replacement for his deceased one and whenever Ellie reminded him of Sarah, he looked
at his broken watch that Sarah gave him.
They later met two brothers, Sam and Henry who teamed up with Joel and Ellie for
better chances of survival but both of them ended up dying. Henry shot his younger brother
because he got infected and tried to bite Ellie and then Henry committed suicide as he was
overcome with guilt and grief which was exactly what Joel didn’t want to experience again.
CHAU Jonathan
L3 CCA Groupe 1
At the end of the story, Joel was confronted with a hard choice: letting Ellie die to
possibly find a cure or saving her which meant damning the world. Joel didn’t want to sacrifice
Ellie for “the greater good”, he already lost the one thing in the world that mattered to him and
going through grief again was not an option for him: there was no point in surviving for him if
it meant having nothing or no one to live for. Saving humanity amounts to nothing if it means
being alone and that’s what guided his decision in my opinion.
The reason why I wanted to talk about this game specifically is that it was the first game
I played that had a well-rounded plot with well written characters and also because I truly
appreciated Joel and Ellie’s relationship and how it evolved during the course of the game. The
graphics were also quite good considering its release date (2013): playing it almost felt like
watching a movie. The game also depicted a broad spectrum of behaviors in a post-apocalyptic
world and in a really smart approach in my candid opinion. The attention to detail in this game
was outstanding and made this game even more memorable to me. It was basically a
masterpiece.
Through the loss of his daughter, Joel found himself living alone, far from his brother.
He lost companionship, lost friends along the way, along his journey. And even though Joel
had Tess at the early stages of the story, grief still made him feel lonely. Losing his daughter
meant losing a unique connection in a very traumatic way and it can be hard for people to
understand him: bonding with Ellie helped him moving forward. Only those who can love
strongly can suffer great sorrow when confronted with grief. However, this same necessity of
loving eventually serves them to counteract it and heals them.