After The First Death

“Think about it, Myra. How old were you when you were baptized? Two weeks, two months? Do you remember being baptized with the name Bonnie? Of course not. It’s what people have told you. Have you ever seen your birth certificate? Not the thing they give you when you go to City Hall for a copy, but the original? The one that says your name is Myra. You’ve never seen it, have you? But that doesn’t mean it does not exist. You have never seen me before but I exist. I have existed all this time. I might have been there when you were baptized. Myra.” 

Artkin speaks these lines to a waitress at a restaurant where he and Miro eat before the hijacking. These lines show how Artkin uses words to make people question themselves. Artkin uses calm, unflappable logic to make his points, even if his points aren’t true. By doing so, he can convince people of things simply by sounding as if he knows what he’s talking about.

“Besides, the bushes and trees and other growths in his homeland—ah, but he had no homeland—were different. Just as the people were different. And the food. In the matter of food, Miro felt himself a traitor; he was enchanted by American food, hamburgers and hot dogs and potato chips. He watched the television commercials for McDonald’s and Burger King and others with pleasure. He told no one about these small pleasures.” 

This passage of Miro’s thoughts shows the war that goes on inside his head, as well as the danger of thinking of others as “different.” Miro knows only his indoctrinated beliefs about his homeland. It may be that the place shares similarities in terms of plants, food, and people with America, but he has learned to think his homeland is different, allowing him to see America as opposite from himself. He hides his enchantment with American food because he believes it is wrong to like anything from a “different” place. Through Miro, Cormier reveals the importance of perspective. 

“She knew the boy’s name was Miro and the man was Artkin. She’d heard them exchanging names a few moments ago, and somehow the realization that they had names restored a sense of normality to the situation, reduced the degree of terror that had engulfed her during the bus ride to the bridge. Miro, Artkin was much better than the boy, the man, rendering them human.”

This section of Kate’s thoughts comes shortly after the hijacking. Learning Miro and Artkin’s names is calming, even if that knowledge doesn’t change her situation. Personal details about people have an effect on our perception of them. “Boy” and “man” could be anyone. “Miro” and “Artkin” are people she can understand who have names and homes and possibly families. Cormier points out that the men’s names humanize them and make them seem less villainous. This concept parallels how Cormier gives the reader the hijacker’s perspective as well as his victims’, emphasizing terrorists are humans, and the reader is capable of empathizing with them.

“Fort Delta has the same facilities as the Y, of course, but it was a treat to take a bus into Hallowell and get away from the post. Until a few years ago, my existence and my activities were confined to Delta, which is not as limited as it sounds since Delta is a self-sufficient and self-sustaining community. But I began to get a kind of claustrophobia about two years ago. Unlike some Delta kids who went to school in Hallowell, either at public or private schools, I attended schools on the post: small classes, much individual attention, and educational monitoring my father himself had instituted. So there was a sense of freedom when I went to Hallowell on the bus.” 

Here, Ben reveals his cloistered existence in Fort Delta and the subtle control his father exerts over his life. As he came into his teens, Ben yearned for freedom but remained confined to the fort. This trapped feeling may have contributed to his eagerness to help with the bus hijacking. Though dangerous, the bus incident offered Ben a way to escape Fort Delta’s suffocation for a little while.

“Miro had done the taping swiftly and efficiently. The children were a nuisance as he worked. He had to step over them and between them, brushing their legs aside in order to reach the windows. The children looked up at him curiously but with a certain amount of indifference, as if they were watching a scene on television, something that did not affect them at all, something they could tune out if they wished. The effect of the drugs, Miro supposed. Or perhaps American children were already doped with television itself.” 

These lines come after the bus arrives at the bridge and shows more of Miro’s mindset against America. Miro notes how he is diligent and thorough with his job. He contrasts his disciplined upbringing to the children, who seem almost unaffected by his presence, and he blames television, an American staple, for how unaware American children are; Cormier offers an alternative explanation when Miro considers that it might be the drugs working. Here, we see that Miro’s perspective is negatively influenced, inaccurately, by his indoctrinated beliefs. 

“All the Kate Forresters. Were other people like that, she wondered, not simply one person but a lot of them mixed together? Did the real person finally emerge? But suppose that real person turned out to be someone terrible? […] My God, she thought later, what do I want? Perfection? What’s the matter with me? She wasn’t perfect herself, why should she demand perfection from others? What would her friends think if they knew about these secret Kate Forresters, if they could penetrate her disguises?” 

Kate thinks this while she tends to the children on the bus. These lines show her fear and uncertainty, both about the situation and herself, and they offer a contrast to Miro. While Miro doesn’t really start to wonder about himself until Kate questions his motives, Kate questions herself from the story’s beginning. She fears others discovering how unsure she is and wonders what the hijacking will bring out of her personality—if her true self will be revealed as someone she likes or not.

“She also realized that the present moment counted: now, not the next minute, the next hour, the next day. She’d seen Artkin look at the children in annoyance as he talked to the boy Miro at the window. She had to keep them quiet, docile so that Artkin wouldn’t feed them any more dope. She had to keep the children from getting on Artkin’s nerves. Cripes, she thought ruefully as she held a weeping child on her lap, she had to keep them from getting on her own nerves. She had little experience with kids. She was an only child, had seldom done any baby-sitting. Yet she knew the children were a kind of blessing for her. Worrying about them, she was able to put her own terror aside, at least for a little while. They diverted her panic and channeled her energy into caring for them, keeping her busy, keeping her from thinking about herself.” 

A few things happen in this passage of Kate’s thoughts. First, she realizes that caring for the children, if a new and uncertain experience, offers her a distraction from her fear. The children need her more than she needs to be afraid. Second, this passage highlights the importance of living in the moment. Kate could question the past or worry about the future, but neither will help her current situation. Focusing on the here and now lets her take actionable steps to control her situation as much as she can.

“The asterisks again.

Denoting the passage of time.

But only a few minutes. Three, four at the most.

Time going slowly, bent out of shape like a Dali watch.

But a good thing so that I can control myself.” 

These lines from Ben’s thoughts show the result of his PTSD. The asterisks are an avoidance technique. Rather than acknowledge what he might be thinking in the few minutes they symbolize, he types the asterisks to fill space and avoid thoughts of the bus incident. He also feels numb and distorted, which he likens to a watch in the artist Dali’s Melting Clocks painting, in which Dali depicts time as something without form.

“So began a time at mid-afternoon when the children came under the influence of the drugs. From this time on, the children were doped and dazed, sluggish with sleep, limp and listless. They ceased to have identities. Earlier, Kate had gone among them, asking their names, rousing those still slumbering, trying to make some kind of contact with them. The names had individualized the children for Kate, but she still got some of them mixed up. There was Monique, of course, still longing for her Classie, and the freckled, red-haired boy who was Alex. Karen with tiny earrings in her pierced ears and Chris who was a boy but might have been a girl with his bangs and flowing brown hair. Raymond with his eyes still closed. Kimberly who wore steel-framed glasses, one lens cracked. Alison and Debbie and Kenneth and Jimmy, whom she had not yet sorted out and so still got their names confused. Mary in pigtails, now unraveling. The two sisters, Ginny and Patty, who looked utterly unlike sisters, for Ginny was pale and delicate, almost transparent, and Patty was dark and robust. P.J., thin-faced and sad-eyed, who had hardly uttered a word (someone else had volunteered his initialed identification), and Tommy who wore horn-rimmed glasses that seemed permanently smudged and probably contributed to his perpetual squint.” 

This passage builds on the idea that names humanize people. Learning the children’s names allows Kate to tell them apart, as well as remember key details about who they are. The children she confuses have no additional details, which makes them less memorable, despite their definitive names. Once they come under the influence of the drugs, the children lose the things that give them their individuality. The little details are lost, leaving only their names, and without the details, the names are more easily jumbled.

“Kate thought of her own mother and father. God, what were they thinking? She realized she had barely given them a thought since the takeover of the bus. Maybe she had purposely blocked them out of her mind, just as she tried not to think of the kids at school. Thoughts panicked her; so did memories. She had to concentrate on the bus and the children, here and now. She had to stop the tendency to push panic buttons.” 

This passage of Kate’s thoughts shows her starting to succumb to the hijacking’s stressors. She purposefully pushes away things that cause anxiety in order to focus on the present moment. Worrying about things she can’t control will only render her less equipped to handle the situation. This may be much the same thought process Ben went through during his time on the bridge. If Kate had survived the incident, it is possible she would have developed PTSD.

“In one way, she wanted this standstill to go on and on. Each moment that passed gave her a sense of having survived this long. She was afraid of what would happen if some kind of action took place. The thought haunted her: They can’t afford to let me survive. They will kill me first. She had lived with that knowledge for such a long time now—time, she had learned, has nothing to do with a clock on a wall or a watch on your wrist.” 

Here, Kate’s thoughts speak to the fluidity of time. The measurement of time is a man-made construct that often governs days, weeks, and years of our lives. For Kate, those distinctions are stripped away. Rather than measured in increments, time seems to move faster or slower based on what’s happening in the moment. Kate wants to believe time has meaning, but in reality, the time only matters in that it is passing.

“Raymond’s mother had gray hair and his father was bald. He heard them say: ‘Raymond is a late baby.’ He worried when he heard them tell people that. He knew what late meant. It meant not on time. It was not good for people to be late. ‘Come on, we’re going to be late,’ his father would call to his mother when they were going out and the baby-sitter was there. […] They would be angry because he did not eat the candy. And that would be just as bad as having them find out that he was a late baby.”

Raymond is one of the kids on the bus. This passage of his thoughts shows the hijacking from a child’s perspective. Raymond has internalized “lateness” as a bad thing, and his childhood logic tells him being a “late baby” is bad. He equates being a “late baby” to negative consequences and fears what will happen if the hijackers learn he’s a “late baby,” even though his late status has no influence here. Cormier is identifying that the children don’t quite understand the politics at work around them and perhaps internalize the events as their fault. 

“‘Because, Miro,’ Artkin said, sighing patiently, ‘there must be a step beyond violence. Explosions and assassinations and confrontations cannot buy us back our homeland. They are only steps on the way, to call attention. After the terror must come the politics, the talking, the words. At the proper time, the words carry more power than bombs, Miro. So while we still use bombs, there comes a time when we must use words.’” 

Here, Artkin differentiates between violence and negotiation. He admits violence serves little purpose other than getting the attention of the American government, suggesting that less violent techniques have failed. Words are more important than explosions. While explosions direct attention the right way, they cannot bring about change on their own. Discussion must follow to progress. Terror is only a way to make sure the right people are listening.

“Maybe there’s a relationship between bravado and cowardice. And tough language made you feel tougher, braver. Maybe the tough kids at school, tough in behavior and language, were really the scared ones after all, the way she talked tough to herself now to keep up an appearance of bravery. Christ, she thought, surprised at the idea. And immediately felt better even as she pondered how the same word Christ could be both a curse and a prayer.” 

This passage of Kate’s thoughts speaks to the difference perspective makes. Before the bus, Kate viewed the tough kids at school as just tough. On the bus, her own toughness is an act, which makes her realize the kids at school might also be putting on acts. What she and those kids show the world may not match how they really feel. Similarly, words have different meanings, depending on their use. Perspective and a given situation define the way we use our words and emotions.

“Hey, wait a minute, she thought, what’s going on here? Why this great surge of hope when actually I’m down in the pits? Why not? Things couldn’t possibly be worse, and once you accept that, you can begin to hope. You can begin to take chances, be reckless because, what the hell, you have nothing to lose, right? Right. She closed her eyes, exulting in the sudden flow of thoughts. Let’s count the blessings, she thought, the things on Our Side. The key. Miro who was obviously the weak link among the hijackers. Little Raymond, even, who was bright and intelligent. And this new knowledge of hers, this new hope. She caught her breath, pondering a new thought: the possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth—love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn’t flowers grow out of dirt?” 

In this passage, Kate stumbles upon the idea that desperation changes a person. When there is nothing else left, she finds hope because she has nothing to lose. If she’s going to die either way, she may as well try to be a hero first. These lines also expand on the idea of opposites. Hopelessness begets hope because the state of hopelessness makes us want to believe in something. To thwart hopelessness, we believe, which sparks hope.

“His life had prepared him for this moment. Hers hadn’t. He was prepared to hurt and to kill. She was prepared for nothing. Certainly, not to be brave. But being brave shouldn’t be something that you are trained for, should it? Bravery should be an interior quality, summoned from within. Where is mine? Kate asked herself dismally. Where is mine?” 

These lines from Kate’s thoughts show her comparing herself to Miro. Based on Miro’s actions and persona, Kate believes him to be more prepared and capable than she is. As is seen throughout the book by Miro questioning himself, he is not more prepared—only prepared in different ways. By Kate thinking she is prepared for nothing, she gives Miro power while diminishing her own self-worth. She makes bravery the only trait that matters, which is an unfair comparison, since she and Miro have lived very different lives.

“My God, Kate thought, turning away, looking at the blank taped window. She brought her knees up to her chin and sank back in the seat out of his view. She did not want to see him at this moment. He had seduced her with his pathetic tale of wandering through the camps as a child and had somehow enlisted her sympathy. But now she recognized him for what he was: a monster. And the greatest horror of all was that he did not know he was a monster. He had looked at her with innocent eyes as he told her of killing people. She’d always thought of innocence as something good, something to cherish. People mourned the death of innocence. Someone had written a theme paper on the topic in school. But innocence, she saw now, could also be evil. Monstrous.” 

Here, Kate explores the idea that traits are not one-sided. She has always thought of innocence as a good thing. The children on the bus are innocent victims of the hijacking. Listening to Miro talk about how he has killed makes Kate understand that he is innocent of the harm he’s caused. Miro doesn’t understand that his actions are right in his eyes but wrong in the eyes of others. The monstrous type of innocence shows that traits are not inherently good or bad. They are neutral.

“We were poorly trained in those days, Ben, but trained superbly in one thing: patriotism. There are all kinds of patriotism; ours was pure and sweet and unquestioning. We were the good guys. Today, there is still patriotism, of course. But this generation is questioning. This generation looks at itself in a mirror as it performs its duties. And wonders: Who are the good guys? Is it possible we are the bad guys? They should never ask that question, Ben, or even contemplate it.” 

These lines from General Markhand’s point-of-view show generational difference in terms of thoughts. The general holds unquestioned patriotism in the highest regard, so much so that he can’t comprehend people questioning loyalty to their nation. He believes patriotism must not be doubted, and by doing so, he is closed to the idea that other places and cultures are equal to his own. He breaks the world into two groups: the “good guys” and “bad guys,” where his side is good. This kind of thinking leads to the “us and them” mentality, which sparks conflict and drives people apart. This quote also reflects quote 18, wherein Miro’s belief in his cause bolsters his belief in his innocence—the general supports this kind of belief at all costs, labeling it “patriotism.” Cormier seems to suggest that the terrorists and the government organization are not so different. 

“I have allowed my thoughts to take me—and you—to places where we should have not gone, to all those tests and measurements. The important thing right now is finding you and confronting you face to face. And that brings me back to the search for you. I had a sense as I was walking along of also searching for myself, knowing that as my son you are heir to my own vulnerabilities.” 

Here, General Markhand searches for Ben after reading about Ben’s plan to kill himself. The general compares Ben to himself, saying they share vulnerabilities. This quote opens the question of whether children learn to be vulnerable in the same ways their parents are. The general kept Ben closely monitored growing up. It may be that such a closeness caused Ben to become like his father, or it may be that Ben would have grown to be like his father regardless. It is also possible that children to not learn to internalize their parents’ vulnerabilities and that General Markhand’s guilt speaks here.

“He should be suspicious, of course, and he would be if it were anyone but an American schoolgirl, one of those hollow, empty-faced girls without any purpose in life. They were beautiful the way flowers were beautiful, with no purpose except to be beautiful. He continued to stare at Kate’s body while Kate continued to look out the window. Let her look. She was like a flower and flowers should be allowed to follow their inclinations. Until the season ended and they died.” 

This section of Miro’s thoughts shows how he underestimates Kate. Despite getting to know her during the hijacking, his training holds firm so that he thinks of Kate only as something pretty. Dehumanizing a group allows another group to do them harm. By thinking of Kate as a flower, Miro pretends she isn’t a person and that killing her isn’t the same as taking a life. He justifies killing her because flowers die quickly anyway. This quote also foreshadows Kate’s death.

“What was there to feel? Miro wondered. A man lived his life and performed his duty and did what was necessary to survive. As Artkin did. How he wished he could be like Artkin someday.” 

This passage is one example of how Miro struggles with the idea of feelings. Whether because of his training or tough life before Artkin found him, Miro has buried his emotions beyond where he can feel them. He doesn’t understand Kate’s emotions and longs to be cold and clinical like Artkin.

“She said nothing for a moment. She was really sad for him, the way it’s possible to feel for something you do not understand. He was still a monster, of course. But who had made him a monster? This world, his world. Who was guilty, then: the monster or the world that created it?” 

This passage from Kate’s thoughts shows her forgiving Miro for who he is. It may be Miro lacked feeling before his training, but Kate chooses to believe the training made him into an emotionless portrait of monstrous innocence. Her question of who bears the guilt—the world or the monster—has no answer. Miro may have been trained to be monstrous, but he chose to accept that training and be what he was taught to be.

“If the attempt at rescue failed and more children were sacrificed than were saved, scapegoats had been set up to absorb the blame. They would acknowledge publicly that they went against official policy. They would be stripped of command, possibly face jail terms. The men involved were willing to assume the role of scapegoats. See what I mean about patriotism, Ben? This is the greatest patriotism: to accept disgrace for the sake of your country. The traitor as patriot. Was Judas, too, a scapegoat?” 

These lines show how General Markhand prepares for failure. Rather than accept that he made mistakes that led to the children not being saved, he constructs a pre-set system of blame so the American people will have someone to point at. These scapegoats will ruin their lives for patriotism, which brings up a similar question to the one Kate asked about monsters. The scapegoats may be trained in patriotism, but they make the choice to sacrifice their livelihoods to hide mistakes. Again, there is no right or wrong answer.