The Sweet Hereafter: Blame and Civil discourse

We are surrounded by unexplainable horrors: gang violence and murder; hurricanes and other natural disasters cause hundreds of casualties; giant passenger planes crash into the ocean and hundreds die terrifying deaths. Justice and our search for moral peace seemingly require us to find an answer for these tragedies even though we subconsciously know that conclusive answers may not exist. Nonetheless, we need to blame someone. The courts often cannot decisively resolve who is to blame and even when there is closure, we generally have no cure other than imprisonment or compensation to make things right again. Efforts to assign blame often lead to suffering while the failure to make the effort leads to some lasting damage to the soul, both individual and communal. Thus, we seem to have no choice even though we understand that moral peace will not be found either way. This struggle to assign blame, responsibility and liability is the core of The Sweet Hereafter. The book was inspired by a 1989 school bus crash in south Texas which took the lives of 21 children, initiated multiple lawsuits and, in some ways, destroyed a community. In The Sweet Hereafter, Banks examines blame, responsibility, liability, lawyers, truth, greed, and the implications of community as a result of the tragedy. This horrific and unexpected event brings to light the moral implications of tragedy while questioning communal and personal responses to that tragedy.

The reader learns the story through the detailed recollections of each of the central characters. The first four chapters present the perspectives of four narrator-witnesses who each give their views of the bus crash: Dolores Driscoll, Billy Ansel, Mitchell Stephens, and Nichole Burnell. But the events, except for the crash itself, don't matter as much as the characters' interpretations of the events and the impact of those events on the characters and on Sam Dent. In telling the same story from various participants' points of view, Banks

Cited: ) Banks, Russell. The Sweet Hereafter. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Print.