After

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-8

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Character Analysis

Felix Salinger

Felix Salinger is the narrator and protagonist not only of After but also of all seven books in Gleitzman’s Once series. This particular installment, which is chronologically the fourth book in the series, begins on Felix’s 13th birthday in the winter of 1944-1945. For two years prior to the beginning of After, he lived in an earthen hole beneath the stable in Gabriek’s barn in Poland. With Gabriek’s protection, Felix hides from the Nazis who occupy Poland and prioritize the arrest of any Jew. Felix’s parents were Jewish booksellers and have long since been captured by the Nazis and transported to a death camp. For the majority of the narrative, Felix assumes that they are dead.

Able to emerge from his hiding place for just a few minutes at night, Felix interacts only with Gabriek, who brings him food and reading material and teaches him a variety of lessons. Felix’s cramped quarters have affected his development, particularly impacting his legs, though his hearing and sense of smell have become more acute. Felix wears glasses that are broken and fitted with a four-year-old prescription. Midway through the narrative, Yuli brings him a sack of glasses—formerly belonging to concentration camp captives—from which he chooses a new set. Zajak, the Polish field doctor, also prescribes a series of daily exercises to help Felix recover the strength in his legs.

Felix has an active imagination, continually creating fanciful answers for the multitude of questions he faces. A reader of boys’ adventure stories written by British author Richmal Crompton, Felix occupies himself by imagining heroic, positive outcomes to the multitude of dismal troubles that surround him. In times of crisis, he even goes so far as to pray to Crompton for guidance, and this odd practice emphasizes the desperation with which he clings to the last few shreds of his childhood. As the narrative progresses and Felix’s abilities, confidence, and experiences expand, his dependency upon fantasy declines and he stops calling out to Crompton. By the end of the narrative, only four or five months after its beginning, Felix is an accomplished surgical assistant, a clever procurer of necessary provisions, and a potentially lethal member of the Polish partisans.

Gabriek Borowski

Gabriek Borowski is a Polish national who had been captured by the Nazis and sent to a German work camp, only to escape and return to his rural farm. At the beginning of the narrative, his beloved wife, Genia, has died at the hands of the Nazis. Gabriek himself is subject to execution both as a returned camp worker and because he secretly harbors Felix. From the outset, Gabriek is effectively Felix’s surrogate father, and Felix is so loyal to Gabriek that he will go to any length to stay with him. Gabriek displays many fatherly traits, such as insisting that Felix continue learning and exercising. A benevolent guardian, Gabriek embodies kindness. To acknowledge Felix’s 13th birthday, Gabriek gives him a compass, the true purpose of which fuels Felix’s curiosity for months.

The local Nazis perceive Gabriek to be a cooperative farmer who provides them with cabbages. Secretly, however, Gabriek works with the partisans, the Polish resistance movement. Because of his prowess with machines and inventions, the partisans continually seek his help to sabotage Nazi infrastructure. When the Nazis burn his house and barn, Gabriek permanently joins the partisans and spends weeks in their care, recovering from a serious head wound before resuming his resistance work.

Yuli

Yuli is a young Russian woman, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties. After her parents are killed by the Nazis, she takes her father’s name to honor his memory and flees to Poland where she joins the partisans. A ferocious, fearless fighter, Yuli shows no reluctance to deceive, engage, and kill Nazis in close combat. Bearing scars from a near-fatal grenade attack, Yuli is wounded twice more in the course of the narrative.

Perhaps because of the proximity of their ages, the fact that she shaves her head like a Jewish prisoner, and the fact that Felix also lost his parents in the war, Yuli and Felix bond. Among the war-hardened members of the forest partisan group, Yuli quickly becomes Felix’s advisor and protector. In his more fanciful moments, Felix fantasizes that Yuli and Gabriek will one day fall in love, marry, and adopt him as their son.

In addition to the moral support she offers, Yuli imparts deadly, practical skills to Felix. She teaches him the quickest, most effective way to kill someone. Yuli also shares harsh lessons of war with Felix, persuading him to accept clothing and personal items that partisans have taken from Nazis who previously stole them from Jews in concentration camps. After the war ends, Yuli acts as Felix’s translator, connecting him with Russians who take him to the German concentration camp where his parents might still be alive. In the end, Yuli commits herself to hunting down Nazi war criminals who try to escape justice.

Dom

A large farm workhorse, Dom stands atop the wooden lid of the hole where Felix lives below his stable. After two years of perpetual closeness, Dom and Felix become quite intimately acquainted when Felix saves him from Gabriek’s barn after the Nazis set it on fire. From that point, Felix and Dom become constant companions until the last chapters of the book when Felix sets off to determine whether his parents are alive.

Dom is massive, gentle, and compliant. Because Felix is relatively enfeebled, there are many tasks he does not have the strength to perform—carrying the wounded Gabriek, transporting dozens of tins of food, pulling a cart of orphans through a swamp—and Dom unfailingly provides the strength that Felix lacks. When bedding down during a cold night in the swamp, Dom also provides the body heat that causes Jewish orphans and German orphans to nestle together for warmth.

Felix anthropomorphizes Dom throughout the novel, confiding in the horse and attributing human understanding and emotions to the animal. He imagines that Dom understands his intentions and shares his feelings. When Felix finds the bodies of murdered partisans in the forest and buries them, he says of the horse, “He’s not complaining, just looking at me with his gentle eyes. I can see how sad he’s feeling” (142-43). When Felix comes upon death and atrocity, he likewise shields the horse’s eyes to protect him from seeing the horror. Yuli understands Felix’s bond with Dom and promises the boy that she will find the right farmer to adopt the horse.