The Journal of Seeking Peace

The Journal of Seeking Peace

Guilt is a very important emotion that comes from self-consciousness. There is no doubt that guilt is useful and necessary. However, feeling too guilty can lead to painful self-doubt, shame, and depression. This is the experience of Dolores Driscoll in The Sweet Hereafter, written by Russell Banks. The story begins with a school bus accident that kills fourteen children in the town of Sam Dent, New York. There are four different narrators in this book. Through every narrator’s view about the accident, the author guides the reader to realize that the accident is a disaster and no one is responsible. Dolores Driscoll, the school bus driver, has the most to gain by telling her tale to the readers because she is seeking peace of mind.

The accident brings Dolores feelings of guilt, and by telling her story she wants relief and peace of mind. She feels guilty because the steering wheel was in her hands, and she partially caused the accident. Dolores recalls the accident over and over again, but every time, her recollection is different. She is trying to find the best reason to convince the reader and herself that her action is “on the side of angels” (Banks 34). Dolores lies about seeing a dog because she is scared that the truth will attract people’s blame. However, the lie makes her feel guiltier. The last time she recalls the accident to the reader she says, “No, I am almost sure now that it was an optical illusion or a mirage, a sort of afterimage, maybe, of the dog that I had seen on the Flats and that had frightened and moved me so…I acted as though it was a real dog I saw” (Banks 34). Dolores gives the reader the real reason why the accident happened, and telling the truth brings her peace of mind. By telling her story, Dolores accepts the accident and reality, feels relief from her guilt, and finds the redemption she had been looking for.

The accident brings Dolores great psychological pressure and stress. The accident is a shock for her. She does not fully remember the accident, and it is hard for her to describe people or things concerned with the accident. The terrible memory lingers in Dolores’s heart, and brings her great psychological pressure. She says, “The full weight of the vehicle and the thirty-four children in it bearing down on me like a wall of water” (Banks 34). Dolores feels a great deal of anxiety because of the trauma of the accident itself, the memory of the dead children, and the fears of people’s blame. Time solves most things, but not Dolores’s stress. Several months after the accident, Dolores is actually relieved when she learns that Nichole Burnell, a bus accident survivor, lied in court and said Dolores was speeding. Dolores knows that she will be blamed by the town’s people, but she says, “I [feel] as if a great weight that I [have] been lugging around for eight or nine months, since the day of the accident, [have] been lifted from me” (Banks 247). Dolores feels a surge of relief and gets peace of mind because the town finally ended the lawsuit and the town’s people have a place to put their collective blame. For Dolores, the fact that the lawsuit brings closure for the town is more important than the fact that she has been wrongly accused. By telling her story, Dolores is looking for relief after the accident, and finally she realizes that only the town’s peace can ease the pressure on her psyche and bring her peace of mind.

The accident disconnects Dolores from the rest of town, but she wants the town’s acceptance and forgiveness. Sam Dent is the town where Dolores grew up, and her family has lived there for