Erik Erickson's model of an eight-stage developmental framework for the psychological development of the individual is predicated on the idea that each person must master certain cognitive and emotional skills and pass through a psychological crisis at each stage to move on to the next stage. This movement from stage to stage is an all-or-nothing process. However, the character of Ben in Robert Cormier's novel After the First Death seems to combine elements of several stages of Erickson's model. However, his characteristics seem most typical of a younger age group, the middle-childhood period that Erickson refers to as the period in which individuals struggle over the competing claims of "industry" and "inferiority" although he also has a number of attributes of the next step in Erickson's model, the adolescent phase of "identity versus identity confusion".
During the first of these phases of development (that of late childhood), according to Erickson, individuals are struggling to gain a sense of themselves as agents in their own lives. Moving from the realm of early childhood, in which each individual is taken care of and is not responsible for caring either for herself or himself or for others, older children begin to want to take action on their own. This is the period in life in which one either learns to see oneself as competent or not; if the cognitive and emotional steps that Erickson sees as inherent to this state of development are not mastered then one will pass through life feeling that one is fundamentally less than competent and that no one - including the self is trustworthy.
Ben seems to exhibit a number of characteristics from this developmental state - although it is difficult to tell from the text (since Cormier was writing a novel and not a psychology book) to what extent some of his actions and thoughts are marked by a feeling of incompetence or a feeling of identity confusion.
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