Fear of murderous alien colonizers would be enough to make your mind play tricks on you. That said, these particular murderous alien colonziers are really, really into playing with people's minds. For that reason, it's a little hard differentiate between run-of-the-mill crazy people and the Sherlocks who've managed to crack the case about Camp Haven being headed up by aliens posing as military personnel.
With the constant threat of "going Dorothy"—that's military speak for losing your mind—looming over all the characters in The 5th Wave, they have to stay on their toes. Whenever someone has an insight, they have to ask themselves: am I in fact brilliant? Or am I just cracking under pressure? It's hard to know the difference, which suits the Others just fine.
Questions About Madness
- How do we know that Tank's death wasn't a suicide?
- Why are the Others so interested in making humans crazy? Shouldn't extermination be enough?
- What effect do the Others think that solitude will have on their human prey?
Chew on This
In the upside-down world of The 5th Wave, sane is the new crazy, and crazy is the new sane.
In The 5th Wave, the Others try to make humans crazy—not so much to kill them as to torture them.