Englisch

I’d like to tell you about a book I read in English class. It’s the novel “After the first death” written by the American author Robert Cormier. It was first published in 1979 by Pantheon Books, and subsequently as a paperback by Laurel-Leaf Books. It is classified as young adult fiction.

Robert Edmund Cormier was an American author for young adults. He lived in Leominster, Massachusetts, USA. He grew up and married there and he raised four children (three daughters and a son). Cormier was a newspaper reporter and columnist for 30 years.

He was inspired by news events and in some cases also by circumstances in his own life for the basis of his stories' plots.

After his first novels The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese and After the First Death   he soon established a reputation as a brilliant and uncompromising writer. Included in his awards is the Margaret A. Edwards Award of the Young Adult Services Division of the American Library Association.

Robert Cormier is a champion of his work. Constructions and the tension bows are perfectly balanced. The book is told from multiple points of view, what increases the relief. The book deals about an important theme: The love to people, who are very close to us and decisions about them, which could be very sore for those people. It is a book about decisions, which the actors have to make very deep inside.

After the First Death is about a summer camp bus that gets hijacked by four terrorists. It is told by a third person narrator primarily, but seemingly in the eyes of Kate, the teenage bus driver, and Miro, the teenage terrorist. It is also told by a first person narrator as a reflection by Ben and his father, a general.

In the novel School, a bus full of 5- and 6-year-old children is hijacked by several terrorists (including Miro led by Artkin). Kate, the bus driver for that day, tries desperately throughout the book to free the children by talking to Miro. She notices that Miro, unlike Artkin, has feelings. Kate uses this characteristic of Miro to her advantage, and begins to flirt with him and finds interest in him. As the story begins, it seems to focus on Ben, the son of a general. The end reveals a surprising, but angering and upsetting twist.

Kate starts trying to win Miro over into not wanting to kill her, but gives up when it seemingly makes no difference. At one point, she even hatches an escape plot, which only makes the terrorists watch her closer.

Snipers are surrounding the bus, but have been held off with the promise that for each terrorist who dies, a child will.

Ben, the general’s son, is sent to bargain, but he is tortured and shot, which eventually leads to his suicide and his father's madness. When help arrives, Miro's cowardice causes Artkin to be shot. Has Miro killed his own father? Kate reveals this question to Miro. He shoots her immediately dead. The last pages are extremely emotional and powerful, as they describe Kate's last thoughts before she dies, Ben's father beginning to go mad and Miro's new life without Artkin.

Miro is a special character. He’s a teen-age terrorist who came from another country, his unknown “Homeland”. Even Miro himself is uncertain of his age because during the training, or how they call it, school, age is not important. The training is preparing them for terrorism. Miro is feeling less and has learned not to give in to the call of nature. For example: Things such as hunger, Restroom needs and most important sleep and tiredness. In the story, Miro is a doubtful teen looking for action.

To give you an idea of the book, I would like to read a text passage from part 11, page 198 at the bottom to 199 at the bottom. This extract is at the very end of the book, after General Briggs, a patriot, sent his son in a situation, where he died. And now he has a conversation with him in his head. (198, bottom, begins with “And then I died”… to 199, bottom, ends with “But I think you should go, Ben”…)

"After the First Death" is an outstanding, exciting novel, driven by terrorism, violence, and bloodshed -- and, even more importantly, by Robert Cormier's great talent of speech. I enjoyed reading this book because it is well written and full of tension that forces one to read on and on. Few other young adult novels are written with this level of verbal ingenuity. What impressed me most about the book's style is the mixture of narrators and narrative styles; Cormier shifts from first person to third person and back again, sometimes even including the interior monologue, jumping back and forth in time as well. Normally, such an experimental style would drive young readers crazy, but Cormier makes it work beautifully. Although I didn't know all the vocabulary it was easy to understand the storyline and the main ideas of the book. This is a book that worked on all levels for me and it's been a very successful read.

Dario Morazán

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