After The First Death

Robert Cormier

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1979

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Part 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 199-207 Summary

Part 10 picks up with Ben already in the van. He has been strip searched and is terrified. Miro is fascinated by Ben’s fear. Artkin questions Ben, telling Miro to keep a watch for anything telling, but all Miro sees when he looks at Ben is a “trembling, timid teen-ager” (202).

Artkin questions Ben, employing painful torture. Ben reveals there will be an attack at 9:30 and that he doesn’t know anything else. To be sure, Artkin employs the torture again, and Miro listens to the screams “loud and long and lingering” (207). Ben looks at Miro with a doomed shame in his eyes. Though he’s seen many people be tortured, Miro has to look away.

Pages 208-222 Summary

The attack comes at 8:35, not 9:30. In a haze of chemical fog, helicopters and soldiers on foot storm the bridge. Miro grabs Kate as a hostage and leaves the bus. Outside, gunfire erupts. In the following commotion, Artkin is shot, but he manages to shoot Ben before he dies. Miro can’t believe Artkin is dead. He expected to die himself, but “He had never counted on Artkin dying” (213).

The helicopter crashes into the van, sending Miro and Kate flying. When they get to their feet, Miro notices the end of the bridge is unguarded. Wounded, he hurries Kate toward the woods, where they take shelter in a tiny enclosure, the gun pressed against Kate’s chest.

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In a final, desperate attempt to save herself, Kate asks Miro how he possibly thinks he can make a difference while he’s alone in a foreign country and with his team dead. Kate remembers Miro’s stories about how he and his brother were alone on the streets and how Artkin rescued them. There is a resemblance between Miro and Artkin, and Kate tries to convince Miro that Artkin is his father. Miro can’t cope with the idea and dissolves into tears. Amidst his grief, he pulls the trigger, and Kate is “dead within seconds” (220).

Part 10 Analysis

Miro sees a version of himself in Ben. Though Miro doesn’t know his exact age, he knows he is around the same age as Ben, and Ben represents someone Miro could have been under different circumstances. Miro sees the fragility of his body in Ben, as Artkin applies torture techniques, an outlook that likely contributes to Miro’s sudden and sharp desire to live when the soldiers attack the bridge. Ben also shows how Kate’s talk of feelings has taken root in Miro’s mind. Miro can’t watch the torture or see the defeated look in Ben’s eyes, things he has done with ease before.

The amount of change Miro experiences throughout After the First Death comes to a head in Part 10. From the beginning, Miro questioned the mission. Kate’s influence caused him to also question himself and the views he’s been taught to believe. The idea that Artkin is his father breaks a part of Miro. He can’t handle the idea that Artkin abandoned him and allowed him to suffer, only to find him at the right time and give him purpose. If Kate hadn’t tried to convince Miro that Artkin was his father, Miro may have kept his wits, and Kate may not have been killed in a moment of Miro’s grief. The mind, like the body, is fragile.

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This section also gives us insight into what Ben endured and why his relationship with his father has dissolved. Ben faced torture, fear, and bodily harm for the sake of his father’s mission, and he resents his father for putting his cause first. Cormier compares Artkin and the general here, suggesting that both put their cause above the lives of other people, sometimes people who idolize them, like Miro and Ben.