All That's Left in the World

Andrew is a protagonist and point-of-view character in the novel. He is 16 years old. He is originally from Connecticut but began traveling south after he lost his parents and his younger sister, Elizabeth, to the superflu. His mother died nearly a year ago, at the start of the outbreak, then he, his father, and his sister lived together for several months alone. When his father got sick, he left, not wanting to spread it to Andrew and Elizabeth. Andrew then survived for a few months until his sister got sick in November. He felt forced to leave his home in the winter, as he “couldn’t bury [Elizabeth] because the ground was frozen solid” and he couldn’t bring himself to “leave her outside to the elements and animals” (50). After traveling alone for over five months, he steps in a bear trap and severely injures his leg, causing him to stop at Jamie’s cabin in the woods.

Central to Andrew’s character is the humor that he uses as a coping mechanism. In his first chapter, he envisions his own death, then an afterlife where he reviews his life as a film. He thinks, “while I’m sitting there” in a theater “munching on afterlife Sour Patch Kids and butter-flavored popcorn, thinking to myself where the hell is this going?, my dumb ass saunters on-screen and I step in the bear trap.