Evidence in the novel After the First Death shows that, although at first it seems as though Ben is narrating, it is in fact General Marchand, Ben’s father, who is narrating the story. One of the first and, in my opinion, the most intriguing of the clues leading to this conclusion I have made is when Ben’s mother calls him by his father’s name. Normally a slip like this would be easily ignored and quite normal considering everybody makes mistakes, but Cormier made it quite clear when he added several sentences explaining that Ben’s mother never mixes their names up and that it was nearly impossible that she had accidentally done so.
The second most intriguing clue is the final Ben-Father chapter. Ben’s father is having a conversation between himself and the Ben that still lives deep inside of him:
Ben: But I was always here. Didn’t you know that, Dad?
Father: Sometimes I thought you were.
Ben: You just didn’t look hard enough or deep enough.
This shows that Ben wasn’t really alive and could therefore be incapable of telling the story from his point of view. This explains the clue from the first paragraph. Ben’s mother had called him by his father’s name because it was really his father doing the narrating.
Another intriguing clue supporting this conclusion is when the “doctor” is said to look like an old college teacher of Ben’s father. If it really were Ben narrating and he really was attending college, why would there be a doctor? This is really, in my opinion, Ben’s father in a mental ward, not Ben attending the same college his father attended. This would explain why there’s a doctor and why he mentions taking pills.
This is the evidence I chose to support that Ben was in fact not narrating the story and it was truly his father speaking from his son’s point of view because he is mentally ill from sacrificing his son for his country.
Nick Nailer, of Thank You for Smoking, is one of the most interesting and unique characters I’ve ever encountered in a fictional work. He has the hardest job in the world: being the public face of a conglomerate that kills almost twelve-hundred people a day. That conglomerate is known fondly as the tobacco industry, or “Big Tobacco.” He’s a vile, bloodsucking, mass murdering, profiteer who doesn’t mind twisting morality for his own benefit—and it makes for a very special character and for a great movie.
Every day, Mr. Nailer wakes up knowing what it’s like to be the most hated person in the country. And it doesn’t bother him one bit because he wants the money, the big bucks. In his own words when asked why he represented the vile industry, he whispered “Population control,” before going on to say “everyone’s got a mortgage to pay. 99% of everything done in the world, good or bad, is done to pay a mortgage. So, perhaps the world would be a better place if everyone rented.” Later in the interview, you find out that his wife has divorced him; he lives in his apartment, while his ex-wife (along with her new boyfriend) and his son lives in his excessively large, luxurious and expensive house, the beauty of which taunts me in my sleep.
Not surprisingly with a personally as cold and uncaring as his, Nick only has two friends. They are the representatives of the gun and alcohol industries, and probably the only people on the planet with personalities as pungent as Nailer’s. They meet every week, and call themselves the M.O.D. Squad, or Merchants of Death. During their meetings, they compare notes and brag about whose product killed the most people that week. Mr. Nailer wins the ghostly contest more often than not, and he savors the bitter-sweet victory.
There aren’t many people willing to twist the fibers of morality for his cause, but Nailer doesn’t mind doing just that. When confronted with a young boy who got cancer from smoking cigarettes on a talk show, he twisted the boy’s morbid condition to benefit tobacco. He called out the cancer researcher to the audience of the show, saying, and I paraphrase “the death of a customer would mean a loss in profits. How could tobacco want to lose money? A cancer death; however, would earn money for someone. Who? The cancer researcher. He’s the real monster.”
Thank You for Smoking’s Nick Nailer is a very special character. He has the honor of being one of the only main-character, protagonists who would be considered evil by traditional standards. It makes him an extraordinarily rich character, and he’s one of the few “bad people” that you get to know up-close-and-personal in any literary work.
