The HBO show The Last of Us takes place in a world where human creations have given way to base human instincts. The world of economics, laws, nations, media, communication, and culture creation has been replaced by the naked desires of the human mind. This is due to the fact that a mutated fungus has infected the majority of the world’s population and turned them into aggressive, deformed, zombie-like creatures. This results in the surviving humans facing an apocalyptic reality filled with dread and uncertainty. But it also results in a world filled with memories and artifacts of a time before the end of human civilization as we know it.
From the destruction of the modern world arise various groups that one might expect: fascist government entities, resistance groups, religious cult-like groups, predatory bandits, and groups of people just trying to survive with a semblance of normalcy. Yet what also rises are the elements that make human beings what they are. To use a digital analogy: if the world constructed around us were a three dimensional projection emanating from a source; the internal code that powered that source would be our nature as human beings. In The Last of Us, the dismantling of the projection has revealed the source code underneath.
It’s at this point the obligatory spoiler warning should be given. If you wish to experience the show for yourself (or play the game), stop reading now.
One of the main characters in the show, Joel loses his daughter in violent fashion at the beginning of the outbreak in 2013. Over the next 20 years, Joel becomes a hardened smuggler, jaded by the loss of his child and the apocalyptic world around him. For Joel, the world is a place filled with cynicism and anger - with any true sense of meaning or purpose nowhere to be found.
This would change after Joel takes on a seemingly routine task for an experienced smuggler. He engages in a deal with a resistance group (the Fireflies) to smuggle a young girl (Ellie) outside of what is known as the Boston Quarantine Zone. Tasked with bringing Ellie to another Firefly group just outside the city, Joel initially sees the mission as just another job. Yet after things go awry, and Joel discovers Ellie’s significance, he decides to escort Ellie himself out west (the final destination where the Fireflies were to take Ellie).
What makes Ellie special is that years ago, as she was about to be born, her mother was bitten by a fungal infected human. The brief exposure to the infection at birth, resulted in Ellie becoming immune from the plague that had devastated humanity. Once her immunity was discovered years later, the Fireflies devised a plan to send Ellie to a Firefly base across the country. It was there that Ellie’s immunity would be used to create a vaccine, and save what was left of the human race.
Being only 14 years old, Ellie bombards Joel with youthful enthusiasm and curiosity during the early stages of their journey together. Up until this point, Ellie has spent all her life within the vicinity of the quarantine zone; and her age means she never experienced the world before the outbreak. Ellie’s innocent sense of wonder and adventure begin to awaken feelings in Joel he seemed to have long forgotten: the love, meaning, and purpose he felt while caring for his long deceased daughter.
Joel and Ellie’s initial journey together would end in what remained of Salt Lake City, Utah. Over their 6 month trek, they each would almost be killed, and they both saved each other’s life. In a decimated world laced with despair, they had found meaning in one another. Having had no contact with the Fireflies for so long, Joel and Ellie’s arrival in Salt Lake is unexpected. This leads to them being ambushed and captured by a Firefly patrol - only to be recognized later.
It is at this point where one of the core elements of human nature, our will to meaning, begins to control the fate of the characters in the show. Joel awakens in a Firefly hospital room to discover the presence of a familiar face. Marlene, the Firefly leader who originally made the deal with Joel to bring Ellie across the country has been waiting for him to regain consciousness. After Joel asks to see Ellie, Marlene explains to him that she is being prepped for surgery. Joel then begins to realize that the surgery the Firefly doctors intend to perform on Ellie will result in her death. Unbeknownst to Ellie, the Fireflies have decided sacrificing her life is worth potentially saving the rest of humanity.
As Joel stirs to anger, Marlene instructs armed Firefly guards to escort him out of the building; and kill him if he tries to resist. Consumed by his paternal love for Ellie, Joel gets the jump on the guards escorting him away, and kills them both. He then goes on to massacre almost a dozen more Fireflies as he rescues Ellie. He shoots the doctor ready to operate on Ellie point blank in the head, and even kills Marlene as she tries to stop his escape. For Joel, rational decision making had completely given way to emotion driven action. Emotion that was propelled by what can be described as the will to meaning.
The will to meaning is a concept conceived by Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997). Frankl’s conception of the will to meaning was solidified during his time imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. During his immense suffering, and the suffering around him, Frankl witnessed the role meaning played in the human condition. Much like the annihilated world in The Last of Us, the hellscape of Nazi death camps laid bare the foundational elements of human nature.
Frankl’s conception of the will to meaning, and the associated psychotherapeutic construct (logotherapy) became what was known as the ‘third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’. The other two being Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Alfred Alder’s individual psychology. In a reductive sense, Freud’s construct could be seen as the ‘will to pleasure’; while Alder’s could be seen as the ‘will to power’.
Both of these approaches to human psychology can be traced to human nature. One being tied to our desire to reproduce, and our unconscious, primal drives. While the other flows from our desire to seek status and importance in the social matrix of human life. For Frankl, both of these were offshoots of the more ultimate, will to meaning. Pleasure and status weren’t sought for their own ends. They were sought by individuals because they believed each would provide a measure of meaning in life they felt was missing. In The Last of Us, these base elements of human nature can be seen in characters throughout the show; especially the will to power. Yet ultimately it is the will to meaning that undergirds all of their actions.
For Joel, Ellie had become his reason to live, and protecting her gave his life meaning. His feelings had become so strong, that he was willing to commit mass murder, and prevent the creation of a potentially world saving vaccine. He would even lie to Ellie about what happened at the hospital while she was unconscious and being readied for surgery. Joel would tell a skeptical Ellie that armed raiders had attacked the hospital, and that’s why they had to flee.
But most importantly, Joel would tell Ellie that it turned out there were more immune people like her, but the doctors were unable to make a cure work, and in turn gave up. This meant that Joel had steered Ellie’s mind away from thoughts of self sacrifice, or ultimate purpose. It also meant that she would stay with him, and provide Joel the meaning he desired. All of Joel’s actions surrounding Ellie were downstream from his will to meaning.
Joel and Ellie would settle in a relatively safe, and prosperous community of about 300 people in Jackson, Wyoming. Walled off from the infected, zombie hordes outside, and with self-sustaining resources, the Jackson settlement provided a sense of normalcy in a broken world. Over the next five years, Joel and Ellie’s relationship would function like that of a single father and a teenage daughter. The dynamics of life had changed from existential danger and despair, to the day to day of suburban living. For Joel, watching Ellie grow gave him all the meaning he needed. Yet for Ellie, the new blandness of life gave her mind the room to begin to probe the existential questions of adolescence.
Viktor Frankl coined the term ‘existential vacuum’ for the feeling an individual would get when they lacked meaning or purpose in their lives. Like many teenagers, Ellie begins to experience the effects of her own existential vacuum. She begins to indulge in sexual experimentation, and rebellious expression; which leads to inevitable parent clashes with Joel. Yet her mind cannot escape the questions surrounding what happened years ago at the hospital, her immunity, and her overall purpose in the world. Ironically, by saving Ellie to fulfill his own will to meaning, Joel had determined that Ellie would eventually be driven by her own.
Some years after Joel and Ellie settle in Jackson, Ellie would finally learn the truth about what happened with the Fireflies in Salt Lake City. Ellie witnesses Joel lying about something else, and recognizes his demeanor from when he explained what happened at the hospital. At that instant, she realizes that all her feelings and intuitions were true. That for years she had been lied to by the one person who she felt she could trust the most.
This leads to an emotional break between Joel and Ellie that lasts for the better part of a year. But eventually, Joel and Ellie have a conversation where both make plain how their actions and feelings have been determined by the will to meaning. Ellie confronts Joel about how she knows he lied to her face, even though he swore he was telling the truth. She gives him one last chance to tell her exactly what happened.
She asks him if there were other immune people like her, and Joel tearfully shakes his head signalling there weren’t. She asks him if there were raiders who attacked the hospital, and Joel again admits there weren’t. She asks him if a cure could have been made from her immunity, and Joel despairingly nods yes. And finally, she asks him if he killed all the people there, and Joel nods as the weight of his actions take over his gaze.
Joel finally speaks and tells Ellie that making a cure would have killed her. But Ellie responds angrily by saying:
Then I was supposed to die. That was my purpose, my life would have fucking mattered, but you took that from me. You took it from everyone.
It’s at this moment that Ellie reveals that her anger derives from her belief that the existential angst she’s been feeling could have been cured had she been allowed to be sacrificed. Her own will to meaning has now presented her with the image of what could have been. A purpose and fulfillment that she will now be chasing for the rest of her life in a world in ruins. The irony of course is that had she been sacrificed, she never would have known the feeling of fulfillment. This shows that Ellie doesn’t really wish for her non-existence. She is looking for something to fill the existential vacuum she feels in her current state.
Joel responds to Ellie’s words by saying:
Yes, and I’ll pay the price. Because you are going to turn away from me. But if somehow I had a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.
Ellie, in astonishment, says:
Because you’re selfish.
To which Joel responds:
Because I love you - in a way you can’t understand. Maybe you never will. But if that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, I hope you do a little better than me.
Pensively, Ellie then says:
I don’t think I can forgive you for this. But I would like to try.
With that, Joel’s expression changes from despair and anguish, to one of slight hope. He realizes that despite his actions, the bond he shares with Ellie might persevere. This is all he ever wanted. This was the source of meaning he had found in a broken world. And it was a manifestation of the will to meaning in its purest form.
In the years before Joel and Ellie’s emotional reckoning, they would share some truly happy times. On Ellie’s 16th birthday, Joel would take her outside of Jackson to a long abandoned museum of science and history. Despite being decrepit and overrun by nature, the artifacts in the museum still filled Ellie with joy and wonder. For her, this was a chance to visit a time she never knew, and experience a world filled with possibility and meaning.
One of the centerpieces of the museum was an Apollo space capsule. Ellie is overcome with excitement as Joel gets her to don a space helmet and sit inside. As the two sit side by side, Joel gives Ellie a cassette tape to play as she leans back in the capsule cockpit. The tape contains a recording of a rocket launch countdown from decades ago. Joel tells Ellie to close her eyes as she listens, and she is transported to another time and place.
For a brief moment, Ellie and Joel arrive at a flow state. A state of being where the sense of self disappears, and consciousness merges with reality. This is the place that the will to meaning is directed towards. For Ellie at this moment, she is a kid free of angst or terror. As she imagines zooming into space and beyond, her consciousness is filled with the wonder of freedom and exploration. For Joel, seeing this in the child he’s come to care for, fills his heart with joy. For both, the misery of the outside world has faded away, and their bond as father and daughter define the metaphysical reality around them.
The bond Joel and Ellie shared would be tragically broken three years later, on the day after Joel tells Ellie the truth about what happened at the hospital. Joel is out on patrol when he encounters a young woman being pursued by infected humans. Joel rescues her, and at her suggestion, takes her to an abandoned home where her friends have made camp. Unbeknownst to Joel, the woman he rescued and her group had been searching for him all along. The woman Joel saved returns the favor by shooting Joel in the leg, and then prepares to beat him savagely with a golf club.
Before the woman (Abby) administers her full punishment, she tells Joel why. It turns out Abby was friends with all the Fireflies Joel killed years earlier in Salt Lake City - and the doctor he shot point blank in the head was her father. Since that day, Abby’s own will to meaning had been propelling her towards revenge. She proceeds to enter her own flow state as she viciously beats Joel to the point of death. Having tracked Joel to the abandoned house, Ellie bursts into the room trying to save Joel, but she is subdued quickly by Abby’s companions. It’s at this point that Abby kills Joel in front of Ellie, but allows Ellie to live.
This momentous turning point in the narrative of the show is the consequence of decisions determined by the will to meaning. Joel committed his massacre to protect what gave his life meaning. And because of his actions, Abby murdered him to obtain the meaning she felt she would receive watching him die. In a world stripped bare of the distractions and demands of modern life, The Last of Us shows us how our actions as human beings are largely determined by deeper, unseen forces. Our consciousness makes us believe we are driving the car. But in reality we are merely passengers along for the ride. A ride that is determined by interactions with all the other passengers around us.