Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Heros: Themes
- Heroism
- LaSalle is a hero to the kids of
the Wreck Centre
- Even at the end he is still making
Francis feel better about himself
- The scrapbook kept by the
‘Strangler’ at the St. Jude’s club
- symbol, something to be proud of
- Silver Star is the only medal
awarded for ‘heroism’
- War
- Francis dreams of the German
soldiers that he killed
- soldiers on both sides often have more in common
with each-other than with their commanders
- Arthur’s collapse behind the club one evening suggests
that many of the veterans have similar issues to Francis
- Innocence/ the end of childhood
- naïveté. One is a major event in American
history – the bombing of Pearl Harbor 'the
world was not a safe place anymore.’
- Francis confidently leaves Nicole alone with
LaSalle in the Wreck Centre, he does so in
complete innocence of the danger she is in
- rape of Nicole in the Wreck Centre is the
end of innocence for both her and Francis
- faked age on his birth certificate is a
significant step out of childhood
- Love
- Francis’s love for Nicole is highly romanticised
- he is motivated by both his love for her which
has never gone away, and his guilt about his
failure to help her when she was attacked
- hero-worship the teens feel for
LaSalle before the war
- brotherly or fraternal love in Francis’s memories of his
fellow soldiers, in his remembrance of them every night
- Forgiveness
- Francis is intent on taking revenge on
Larry LaSalle, rather than forgiving him
- Francis is driven by the need to find forgiveness for having
let Nicole down by leaving her alone with LaSalle
- LaSalle gives Francis a measure of forgiveness, when he
tells him that he couldn’t have stopped the rape
- Nicole offers Francis forgiveness in a very understated way
- Concealment and revealment
- he’s hiding his injuries from sight,recall
the image of the Invisible Man
- Larry LaSalle also has a secret concealed in his
past – the mysterious reason as to why he had
left his showbiz career
- which weaves the three timelines together. Cormier uses
foreshadowing extensively to create tension in the novel