The Night Shift

Ella Monroe is one of three protagonists in The Night Shift. About one third of the book’s chapters are told with her as the focus of the third-person limited perspective. In addition to serving as the hero archetype along with the other protagonists, she also embodies the role of the “final girl,” a trope common to the thriller and horror genres. This term refers to the sole survivor—who happens to be female—of a mass murder or a killing spree. She was the only survivor of the Blockbuster slayings in 1999, and she has never been the same since. Alex Finlay reveals the impact of being the “final girl” when Ella is first summoned to talk to Jesse, the only survivor of a similar crime. As the narrative states, Ella believes herself to be “uniquely qualified to help this girl” (9) because she understands “what it’s like to be the only one who made it out alive” (9). That understanding is a large part of what motivates Ella as a character. In the immediate aftermath of the Blockbuster murders, she needed therapy to address her own trauma, but she realized that none of the therapists really understood what she had gone through, so she eventually became a therapist in the hopes that her experiences and insights might help her to “unlock the secrets of the mind and help other victims.