The Sweet Hereafter
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: The Sweet Hereafter
Pages: 11
Rating: 3 stars
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Character development keeps an audience interested. Being able to pull emotion out of the main character allows
the audience to feel the pain or excitement that is being portrayed. In director Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet
Hereafter," Dolores Driscoll brings out the sadness that her character is feeling. You can sense the pain and
distress that she bears. Yet, in the novel, The Sweet Hereafter, by Russell Banks', Dolores does not grow as a
character. The audience never deciphers if Dolores understands the tragic events. The film explores Dolores'
character, which adds depth, while the book illustrates Dolores on the surface and denies her any sort of personal
growth.
In Russell Banks' novel, The Sweet Hereafter, a small town suffers a great tragedy when fourteen school kids
drown after a bus accident on the way to school. The bus driver, Dolores Driscoll, considers the kids to be her own.
Yet, when discussing the accident, she acts nonchalant. It seems as if she is relaying a story without displaying
remorse for the accident. Dolores' priority is to describe the town, "my first stop that morning was at the top of
Bartlett Hill Road, were it branches into Avalanche Road and McNeil,"(Banks 7) and the people in it, "Doreen was a
Pomeroy from Lake Placid..."(11). She also strives to avoid the blame, "A dog-it was a dog I saw for certain. Or
thought I saw"(1). But she even doubts her visions, denouncing the excuses that she keeps arguing. " Maybe
because I felt so cut off from my own children, maybe out of some pure perversity. Who knows now? Fixing
motives is life fixing blame-the further away from the act you get, the harder it is to single out one thing as having
caused it"(10) She never iterates her sadness. The onl...