62 pages • 2 hours read
David BaldacciZero Day
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Puller as the Sacrificial Redeemer
Puller plays the sacrificial redeemer role with his father. As a child, he sacrificed his own need for acknowledgment to salve his father’s fragile ego. With his father’s gradual decline, he now sacrifices any hope that his father will ever see him for himself. Instead, he plays into his father’s delusion that Puller is one of his subordinate officers, even though the charade chips away at Puller’s sense of reality.
Puller also acts out the role of redeemer by forgiving mistakes and allowing second chances to people who genuinely deserve them. It’s a continuation of the role he plays for his father except that he expects other people to meet a certain moral standard that Puller Sr. falls short of. There is no one in Puller’s life to give him the same grace he grants to others. His brother Robert is the only one who would be there for him no matter what, but Robert is behind bars.
When the Army makes the mistake of leaving nuclear material unsecured in the Bunker, Puller is prepared to risk his own life to clean up their mess. He accepts the task without complaint or resentment just as for most of his life, he has accepted his father’s failings, but this time, Puller is finally offered grace himself. Robert finds a way to be there with him, and Cole remains with him in the Bunker. There is nothing she can do to help him, but by staying, she tells Puller he is worthy of her confidence.
In the end, it is Cole who sacrifices herself. Had she run when Puller told her to, she would have been out of range of falling debris. If Puller had his choice, he would rather have saved her, but to her, he was worth the risk of her life.
Rules
From the outset, Puller operates within a framework of rules. There are family rules, like men don’t cry and men are in control at all times. There are rules of conduct in the Army: rules about carrying his sidearm at all times, rules about what uniforms are permissible to wear under what circumstances, rules about what orders to obey without question, even unspoken rules—for example, the first thing to do in a new posting is to find where to eat.
Over the course of the story, Puller adopts more flexibility and even some new rules about prioritizing the individual over the Army. He knows when to allow the rules to slide—like when General Carson makes the mistake of not reporting what Reynolds told her. One of Puller’s personal rules is that everyone deserves to make one mistake and get a second chance. (That will be important in book three when he confronts his brother’s conviction.) In the end, Puller finds that he can operate within a framework of external rules and still have enough flexibility to follow an internal moral code.
Robert Puller as a Traitor
We are first introduced to Puller’s older brother, Robert, with the information that he is in prison for treason. Puller himself doesn’t know if his brother is guilty and can’t fully believe that he is. When he finally asks Robert outright, Robert evades the question on the grounds that the answer would create a conflict of interest for Puller, which would only be the case if Robert is not guilty; if that was the case, Puller would feel honor bound to prove Robert’s innocence at any cost to himself.
Symbolically, Robert’s helping Puller to disarm the bomb represents either redemption or innocence. Thwarting traitors shows him to be the opposite of a traitor himself—a patriot. In that case, either his conviction is false, or there are unknown factors that either explain or mitigate his actions.
The involvement of the Defense Secretary in clearing Robert to help defuse the bomb suggests that the Defense Department has reason to believe it can trust Robert with a matter of national security. Although Robert receives a commendation for his actions, however, there is no move to have his sentence commuted. Since the minimum sentence for treason is only five years in prison, commutation would not be unreasonable. The implication is that the Department of Defense may have a reason other than punishment of a crime for keeping Robert where he is at the moment.
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By David Baldacci
