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At its heart, Andrej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher is a book about stories, including the fairy tales and folklore that humans have told and retold for generations. The interlinked stories focus on the life of Geralt of Rivia and come together to form a novel. The tales about Geralt explore the themes and structures of traditional storytelling by positioning Geralt as a classic hero who fights monsters and saves people in need. However, readers quickly learn that Geralt is more complicated than a typical hero. This complexity allows The Last Wish to question how well traditional hero stories portray humanity. The book frames Geralt’s past adventures within a story about his recovery from an injury, which gives him space and distance to reflect on his actions. Each of the stories presents a situation where challenges test Geralt’s skills, outlook, and beliefs. To distinguish him from traditional heroes, each chapter draws on fairy tales, traditional stories, and folktales for inspiration. However, these elements are often twisted to pose questions about the book’s central themes of humanity, evil, and choices.
The larger storyline of Geralt’s time at the temple of Melitele represents Geralt’s present moment. These episodes serve two main functions. First, they lead into each of the self-contained stories and provide additional context for how Geralt affects the world around him. Second, they show the impact those experiences have on Geralt, especially as he reflects on what he has learned from them. By alternating between the stories of Geralt’s past with his time at the temple, the narrative builds a more complete picture of Geralt’s life as a whole. Each of the stories reveals some insight into who Geralt is and why he is that way. Some of this is straightforward, such as showing how Geralt performs his job as a witcher in “The Witcher.” Other insights are deeper and pose philosophical questions. For example, Geralt faces a moral crisis when he is forced to choose between two evils and kills Renfri in “The Lesser Evil.” Often the “Voice of Reason” chapters help introduce or build on the themes of the stories by alluding to events that happened or will soon be revealed. This uses a narrative device so each story is revealed to the reader as it’s being shared with one of the characters. This also has the vital function of showing how each chapter’s events relate to Geralt’s current experiences and the story’s central narrative.
Each individual story in The Last Wish follows its own narrative structure that includes the rising action, crisis, climax, and falling action. In novels, these stages tend to develop over the course of the book, but here, each individual story chapter has its own narrative arc. The overarching storyline that develops through the “Voice of Reason” chapters has a slower pace and the traditional narrative structure spans all of them. These chapters show Geralt as a person questioning his actions and trying to understand his role in a world that may no longer have a place for him. The “Voice of Reason” chapters is where the central conflict of the book unfolds. Geralt reckons with his personal history and tries to come to terms with his future through an intense inner conflict. The climax of this overarching narrative occurs when he must use all of his witcher skills to win a seemingly unwinnable duel when The White Rose Knights confront him about his past. The falling action that brings the book to its uneasy resolution centers around Geralt’s recognition of his violent future. In the conclusion, Geralt understands that he cannot escape his past or his future, and that both stages of his life work together to shape his experience.
Geralt’s existence as a non-human man helps to provide a more layered insight into the nature of humanity as the book progresses through each of the stories. By having an outsider as the protagonist, The Last Wish can explore the nature of humanity from the perspective of someone who has a different perspective. Geralt does not have the luxury of understanding the world through a human’s experience. In fact, Geralt experiences troubling us-versus-them dichotomies. Many of the monsters Geralt encounters are also people who have either been cursed or misunderstood, and many of the humans he encounters behave in monstrous ways. Characters include people who change into monsters, monsters who pretend to be people, non-human people who behave monstrously, and other exceptions that blur the line between the human and the inhuman. This thread continues through each of the stories as Geralt’s experiences raise questions about the nature of humanity. Meanwhile, Geralt bridges the gap between humanity and monstrosity, and he is keenly aware that he does not fall into either category. While he champions humanity in most instances, he also questions whether it’s his place to determine where the lines are drawn, and whether such distinctions are possible. As each story progresses, these categories become more complicated and less clear. A sense of uncertainty lingers in the final chapters of the book, suggesting that Geralt will continue to exist at the edges of these categories as his story continues into several sequels.
