Hero After First Death Robert Cormier; Prove

¶ … hero After First Death Robert Cormier; prove claim . -This essay represent interpretation center assertions make support, ideas interpretations . Only work cite book, -text citation! Any paraphrases .

Ordinary heroes:

The central importance of the character of Kate in Robert Cormier's After the First Death

The plot of After the First Death revolves around the story of a group of terrorists who have hijacked a bus full of young children from a summer camp. The book dramatizes the stand-off between Miro, a young member of the group who has never known anything but violence and hatred in his life, and Kate, the young, eighteen-year-old girl who is driving the bus. The book is told through a series of alternating perspectives, some first-person limited, some third person limited.

The question of who is the hero of After the First Death is ambiguous. Not even Miro is characterized as entirely villainous. It difficult to imagine Miro becoming anything other than violent, given the values of his upbringing. The only true father he has ever known is his fellow terrorists. The most compelling relationship book is between Miro and Kate. Kate, like Miro, is forced to act like a kind of premature 'adult.' She is in charge of driving the schoolchildren on the regular bus driver's day off. As a teenager, she is uncertain of how to cope with the responsibilities of her position, and feels conflicted about how much she is expected to sacrifice.

Although both Miro and Kate are complex characters, ultimately it is Kate's struggle that is the most gut-wrenching. Unlike Miro, Kate has no choice but to become involved. She feels she has been chosen to be a hero because of her position as a bus driver, yet she also has the basic desire to save herself. She is utterly unprepared to be the caretaker of a busload of frightened, drugged children who are being threatened by terrorists.

It is with Kate with whom the reader identifies: Miro's mentality has been distorted by his environment; the other narrator of the book, Ben, deliberately withholds information from the reader because of his involvement in a top-secret mission. But Kate's narration is straightforward. Kate is open about her moral conflicts. She wants to save the children, yet she also fears what will become of her own safety. "They can't afford to let me survive. They will kill me first," she says of the terrorists, and the reader knows that Miro thinks of her as doomed (Cormier 101). Kate, unlike the other characters of the book, is not certain of her moral compass. The fact that she is torn between altruism and self-interest, and that she does not always have a clear idea what is right to do, makes her the most three-dimensional character of the novel. She its true protagonist and hero, even though her efforts to save the children are not successful.