Joel

Overview

Joel is a middle-aged man in his late 40's who lived a particularly average and cordial life before the plague; since the international apocalypse struck, however, he has crossed numerous moral lines and has now been called "a violent thug, a brutal killer, and a torturer." Undeniably cold-blooded and merciless, Joel is primarily helping Ellie travel across the US because of a request from a dying friend, made just before the pair broke out of a tight, military-supervised quarantine zone for currently unknown reasons.

Coupled with this now roughened sense of consciousness, Joel also has no quarrels with killing people to survive, even if they beg for mercy. In spite of this, he has also become more emotionally vulnerable and fettered in comparison to the likes of people such as Ellie, who have grown up surrounded by such desperation and violence on a day-to-day basis. In that sense, it develops a variable conflict in which what Joel has strained to be, simply for the intention of staying alive, is something that Ellie lives with care-freely and has grown oblivious towards throughout her childhood, placing the two protagonists in a position which asks whether Joel will eventually corrupt Ellie into complete desensitization or if she will instead re-ignite the principles which he once stood for, a question that is explored and put to the forefront in the main storyline of The Last of Us.