The end of the world is a recurring motif throughout the novel. However, while many of the characters talk about it, there is no consensus as to what it actually is. How each of them views “the end of the world” speaks to their respective personalities or states of mind. The book opens with the line, “Atlas Blakely was born as the earth was dying” (9), which reflects his hubris and belief that only he understands the stakes that humanity is facing. This mentality is directly countered in the first line of Julian’s chapter, “Julian Rivera Pérez was also born as the earth was dying because everyone was” (87). This idea is further built upon during Nothazai’s chapter with the line, “The world that Nothazai himself had lived in, which had been dying slowly from the start” (467).

Libby sees preventing the end of the world as the only thing of importance, even when the cost is Nico’s life and the breakdown of all her other relationships. She sees herself as Atlas’s antithesis, but her decisions about preventing the end of the world make her just like him. For Gideon, the end of the world is in the destruction of life and happiness as he knows it, with the idea that “change would […] destroy the world that they had known, which was for all intents and purposes destroying the world itself” (96).