The Only Ones Literary Elements

Science fiction

Set in 2011 on an unnamed Remote Island where people live in isolation.

Third-person narrative

The tone is wretched, and the mood is anxious.

The protagonist is Martin, and the antagonist is the mysterious event making all adults disappears from the island.

There is a conflict when Martin's father never returns home. Martin wonders what could have happened to his father, and when he walks off the island, he is shocked when he discovers all adults are missing.

The climax comes when Martin and his friends finish constructing the mysterious machine his father had started building before he disappeared.

Martin’s ambition to reunite all the people he knew is foreshadowed by Neil’s ability to communicate with animals.

All children, except Martin in the church, understate the meaning of the wooden stool.

The novel alludes to the mysterious disappearance of people in Paul G. Tremblay's story "Disappearance at the Devil's Rock."

The narrator depicts a sense of sight to readers when he says, “A stocky boy with a mess of curly red hair circled the room with a large candle, lighting smaller candles that had melted into the ledges next to the soot-caked windows." The description of the boy lighting the candle creates imaginary images in the reader’s mind to see the events unfolding in the church.

The primary irony in the novel is that young children can set effective rules to govern their society, in which no adult exists.

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