"The Island of the Immortals" is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in volume 70 of Amazing Stories in 1998.
It follows a nameless traveler who becomes curious about the Yendian Plane tourist destination after discovering that its residents have the secret to immortality, only to discover something she'd never expected.
The Island of the Immortals provides examples of:
- Age Without Youth: The Immortal is implied to have a slower version of this trope. While his lack of features is due to the various accidents his body has suffered, he does have long, matted white hair and was described as a once handsome young man who made his living across many lifetimes by hunting in the marshes two or three thousand years ago, suggesting that he eventually began to age despite his inability to die.
- Ambiguous Gender: The Immortal has been so severely mutilated by past injuries that it can no longer be identified as either sex. The villager woman does explain that it was once a handsome young man, but by this point, it is barely a person, which is why she refers to The Immortal as "it."
- Ambiguous Situation:
- The narrator never solves the mystery of how a few residents became immortal.
- How The Immortals transform into diamonds after being buried for a few thousand years is never explained.
- Whether or not Postwand became an immortal after visiting the Yendian Plane. There is evidence suggesting that he may have, as he visited the Yendian Plane 160 years ago without wearing gauze, and the narrator's ship captain claims that the last known case of immortality occurred over 100 years ago. However, his fate is never explicitly stated.
- And I Must Scream: Immortality is portrayed horrifically in this setting, with the sheer state it left The Immortal in deterring the entire world, including scientists and researchers, from looking further into it or wanting to become immortal themselves.
- As seen with The Immortal, immortality is not all it's cracked up to be after a few thousand years. It can't die, but it's also not invulnerable, meaning that any and every injury it sustained over millennia that a normal human couldn't naturally heal from became permanent. As a result, by the time the narrator encounters it, it's been reduced to a burned beyond recognition, limbless, blind, deaf husk that is no longer considered a person. Worse, the village woman implies that it has already been in this state for hundreds of years, and it will remain this way indefinitely, as nothing can alleviate its suffering.
- After the immortals have lived long enough, the villagers bury them in the ground so that they can become diamonds, which tourists take home as souvenirs. However, not only are the immortals still alive after being buried, since nothing, not even thirst or hunger, can kill them, but they don't even stop being sentient after fully crystallizing.
- Apathetic Citizens: The story places a major emphasis on how lifeless and miserable the citizens of the Yendian Plane are, with the only one seeming to have a little life to her being the tourist woman who introduces the narrator to The Immortal. Justified, given the dismal living conditions of the island, the ever present chance of being bitten by the flies that could infect them with immortality, as well as the suffering they witness the immortal residents live through on a daily basis. Tourists who visit the island leave just as miserable as the residents despite spending less time there, and any excitement they have about potentially becoming immortal is quashed after witnessing The Immortals suffering.
- Buried Alive: When The Immortals reach an advanced age, the island's residents bury them in the ground so that they can become diamonds after a few thousand years. They're still alive throughout the process of changing, feeling hunger and thirst but are unable to die from it.
- Downer Ending: The narrator got some of the answers that she was looking for by journeying to the Yendian Plane, emphasis on "some," but the suffering of the Immortal will last indefinitely, and it will likely become the same fate of the other people who were unfortunate enough to be bitten by the flies and "gifted" with immortality.
- Fate Worse than Death: Immortality is considered such a curse that even scientists in this setting avoid the topic completely, and the world has allowed its discovery to fade into obscurity.
- Foreshadowing:
- When the narrator asks about the islands immortals, the boatman begins talking about the diamonds in the ground, which visitors take from the island as souvenirs, until the narrator corrects him that that wasn't what she meant. At the end of the story, the narrator discovers that the diamonds are immortals, or at least what happens to them after they're buried.
- Another hint to the immortals being the diamonds was how the narrator noticed that the Immortals severed arm has black crust at the nub.
- I Was Quite a Looker: According to the legends the villager woman heard, the Immortal was once a handsome young man during the early days of his immortality, which makes his current state even more tragic.
- Nice Girl: The villager woman, in a "She means well and is making the best of a bad situation" kind of way. While she promotes The Immortal as a tourist attraction, she acknowledges its immense suffering and refuses to exacerbate it by burying it, despite a scientist's advice to do so.
- No Name Given: The characters presumably have names, but no one in the cast is named, not even the narrator herself. The most the reader learns are their titles.
- Shout-Out: When thinking about what Island of the Immortals will be like, the narrator brings up the Laputans from Gulliver's Travels, although she gets some details about them wrong due to her poor memory of what she read as a child.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Or island, in this case. Nothing about the island is known to anyone who isn't in the travel industry, and while the narrator learns a little bit from the people she meets, almost everyone is extremely cryptic about what's going on there. Even in libraries, beyond one book written by Postward and his experience with the island, it's clear that the rest of the world is trying to bury the island in the past despite it containing the secret to immortality.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: While the narrator begins the story eager to learn the secret of immortality as it exists on the Yendian Plane, she discovers that the cost outweighs the benefits, as the trade-off for being able to live forever is living with any injury you sustain over the years, no matter how severe, and being incapable of dying in any way, not even through starvation.