49 pages • 1 hour read
Mike LupicaHero
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Challenge of Becoming an Adult
Zach Harriman faces the same fundamental challenge that all adolescents confront: the need to grow into adulthood. That the demands on him are vastly more significant than those faced by other teens makes little difference: He still must search his soul, find mentors, and practice the skills he’ll need to become fully capable and independent in the months and years ahead.
On top of the tragedy of losing a father on whom Zach depends for safety and self-assurance, the boy suddenly develops great physical and mental powers. All children inherit their parents’ strengths and weaknesses, and they must learn to deal with them as their full physical and mental abilities come into play during their teenage years; likewise, Zach must reckon with rapidly evolving capabilities, though his are an order of magnitude greater than normal. Like all teens, he struggles with the awkwardness of the sudden changes and how they throw off his normal responses to the world.
Teens often rebel against their parents and authority figures. It’s part of individuation, a necessary step on the path to adulthood. Zach’s new powers throw him into angry fits, much the way testosterone causes boys to act out as they struggle to adapt to their new body chemistry. Zach learns that he must manage his new feelings: “It wasn’t just energy he needed to blow off. It was the anger he was carrying around with him, making him feel like some kind of ticking bomb” (60). Learning how to balance conflicting emotions becomes a significant challenge for the boy.
Should a young person display extraordinary abilities—in sports, scholarship, or the arts, for example—that person will be surrounded by people eager to teach them and, perhaps, control them for their own purposes. It’s a struggle for a teen to navigate social waters where it’s hard to tell the difference between the friendly dolphins and the carnivorous sharks. Zach must find his way between Uncle John, a lifelong family friend, and Mr. Herbert, a mysterious new mentor whose motives are suspect.
Zach reconciles this dilemma in part by learning how to extract the valuable advice from the chaff tossed by both men. In doing so, Zach soon finds out which man has his best interests at heart.
For Zach, then, the quest to grow up isn’t fundamentally different than that undertaken by any teen. His problems are much larger, but their solutions are familiar: determination, a willingness to learn, and a degree of patience and self-care. Zach may not be the best student at school, but in Life, he gets an “A.”
“Trust No One”
A mysterious message appears on Zach’s computer screen: “Trust no one” (186). For weeks thereafter, Zach ponders it, and he realizes that the words contain layers of meaning. Not only must he be suspicious of the motives of the people he meets, but he must learn to keep a wary eye on people he usually trusts. Most of all, he must reconsider his motives and decisions and not assume that he always has the answers.
As Zach searches for clues to his father’s killing, he encounters Mr. Herbert, whose cryptic advice and riddle-talk annoy and intrigue the boy. For most of the story, Zach must struggle between his desire to learn what Mr. Herbert knows about his father and his distrust of a man who may merely be manipulating and misleading him. Zach finds a similar problem with his Uncle John, Tom Harriman’s right-hand man who believes Mr. Herbert is on the side of the Bads: John’s words contain contradictions that make Zach mistrust him as well. A central issue in the story is how Zach can reconcile the conflict between his suspicions about both men and his need to trust them.
Zach discovers that his newfound superpowers come with special attachments: anger, egotism, and impulsiveness. To his chagrin, he realizes that he can’t even trust himself, much less others.
Even Kate puts one over on him: She’s the secret author of the “Trust no one” message. She explains that it was the only way she could communicate something to him that, were he to hear it directly from her, he wouldn’t understand: “I finally got sick of you being like the rope in a tug-of-war between that crazy old man and your crazy Uncle John. So I thought I’d do something to get your attention” (265). Thus, her subterfuge is for a noble cause, and her gambit works to his benefit. Zach can trust her even when she tricks him.
Finally, Zach realizes that the man he trusted the most, his father, betrayed him by never alerting him to the dangers he must face as the next hero. His dad meant well by keeping Zach’s childhood as innocent as possible, but that doesn’t remove the sting of betrayal that Zach feels.
In the end, Zach learns an important lesson about trust, one imparted to him by Mr. Herbert, who says, “There is one person, though, you’d better learn to trust […]. You” (209). As Zach becomes more comfortable with himself, his intuition grows, and he can more easily see through people’s lies. Trusting himself, he discovers that Uncle John is the real culprit. By taking great care not to blindly trust anyone or their advice, Zach finally sorts out the conundrums and finds his way to the truth.
The Loneliness of the Hero
It takes months for Zach to come to terms with his new powers and responsibilities. They’re thrust upon him without warning before he’s ready and with almost no help from others. His task involves accepting his destiny and learning how to manage his new skills, but he must also cope with the solitude of this new life.
Zach’s unusual abilities derive from his father, who kept him in the dark to protect his innocent years of growth. Now that Tom Harriman is dead, Zach wishes he’d been let in on what’s to come, with his dad tutoring him. Instead, he faces his new powers alone.
Zach’s mother becomes an emotional refuge for the boy. Her love for him, and her ongoing concern for his welfare amid her many public duties, reassures him that his surviving parent is there for him. However, she doesn’t know about her late husband’s superpowers—she’s been kept out of the loop deliberately as a precaution so that she doesn’t become a pawn in the game between Tom Harriman and the Bads, a person who can be tortured for information. Zach also feels the need to keep her in the dark; thus, there’s a limit to what he can share with her, and this puts a lonely distance between them that Zach can’t bridge.
Even Kate doesn’t fully understand what he’s going through. She loves him and will do anything to help him, but his new powers, and the dangers they attract, frighten her. They scare him, too, but he can’t escape into his bedroom as she can. Her loyalty to Zach overcomes her fears, and she stands with him whenever she can. Kate is one of the few people in whom he can confide; her friendship cuts through, when it can, his loneliness.
Mr. Herbert does the best he can in difficult circumstances to help Zach, training him to use his new strengths so that they can become weapons in the battle with evil. However, Mr. Herbert has lost most of his old heroic abilities and can’t join Zach in those fights. Instead, he sacrifices his own life, shielding Zach from an assassin’s bullet. Before he dies, Mr. Herbert explains that he’s Tom Harriman’s father. Zach thinks, “My grandfather. I can’t lose someone else” (281), but lose him he must. Again he’s set adrift, with only his super strengths for company.
Because of the high speed of his abilities and the size and danger of the battles he now faces, he must travel where no one else can go; ultimately, Zach fights his battles alone.
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By Mike Lupica
