Survive the Night: A Novel

Part 4 presents a set of plot twists in the novel. Charlie’s certainty that Josh is the killer reaches its peak as he admits that he lied about almost everything. When Josh stops to check the car after almost hitting a deer, Charlie gets into the driver’s seat to drive away, which forces Josh to act. Fearing for her life, Charlie pulls out the steak knife she had been hiding in her coat, “thrusts the knife forward and plunges it into Josh’s stomach” (203). Though acting in self-defense, she is horrified and flees to the diner. Her decision to trust Marge, however, turns out to be a poor one, as Marge betrays her and knocks her out with chloroform at the end of Part 4. In these chapters, the theme of Trust Versus Paranoia interacts with the theme of The Blurred Lines Between Reality and Imagination. Charlie has another hallucination in which an allegedly dead Josh speaks to her and takes an interest in seeing a movie with her. This scene reflects her deteriorating mental state, with her real-world instincts wrestling with her imagination, which emphasizes guilt and vibrant extremes.

Part 4 also emphasizes the depths of The Devastation of Grief, exploring how compounding feelings can warp and redirect the pain of unprocessed grief. With Charlie beginning to confront her grief about Maddy’s death, she starts to open up to Josh, even though she does not trust him. She reveals that she attempted suicide shortly before she left campus, noting that “she’s never admitted it before. Not even to herself” (198). Charlie’s grief has been compounded by the level of guilt and self-hatred she has been fostering for the past two months: “That’s the real reason she needed to leave Olyphant immediately. Why she couldn’t wait until Thanksgiving or when Robbie was free” (195). Charlie had to leave because she “was afraid that if nothing changed, she’d experience another unfortunate accident, this time with a different result” (199). This revelation shows how Charlie’s guilt has locked her grief in place, causing her mental health to deteriorate.

The reveal about Charlie’s suicide attempt also contributes to Josh’s character arc. It strengthens Josh’s sympathy toward Charlie and his reluctance to complete the job Marge has given him. Though he was lying about much of his identity, his reaction shows that he has come to care about Charlie as a person despite his generally pessimistic world view. His sympathy, as he tells her simply that he is “glad that didn’t happen” (199), marks his appreciation of her true self—Robbie, in contrast, has associated Charlie’s “specialness” with her general silence, misery, and compliance. Josh’s revelation that what he has told her about his parents is true also indicates that Josh and Charlie share a struggle with guilt, creating a parallel between the two characters.

Finally, the author advances Charlie’s character arc as she not only opens up to Josh but also recognizes that she likes many aspects of him. Charlie’s instincts are not lost—she has just surrendered too much of her perception to imagination, which prevents her from trusting herself. Even certain that Josh is a killer who murdered her best friend, Charlie “[feels] a kinship with him, probably because he’s as much of an outcast as she is. Lonely, too. She can tell that even now” (199). Charlie also decides that she wants to live and wants to have a connection to someone like herself. Charlie, who felt guilt-ridden and suicidal at the beginning of the novel, now “wants to live. More than anything” (199).