Steelheart

“In the settling smoke and dust, the two figures stood before each other—one a massive, regal Epic, the other a small homeless man with a silly T-shirt and worn jeans.”

This contrast between Steelheart and David’s father highlights the latter’s bravery and sincerity. The image alludes to David and Goliath, especially when it returns in the final confrontation between David (who shares a namesake with the Biblical character) and Steelheart. In both bookend scenes, the “David” overcomes the “Goliath”—his father by exposing Steelheart’s weakness and David by causing his downfall.

“[Curveball] was a bodyguard and hit man in Steelheart’s organization. There was no way he was part of the Reckoners’ plan—they didn’t work with Epics. Ever. The Reckoners hated the Epics. They only killed the worst of them, but they would never let one join their team.”

Sanderson establishes readers’ expectations based on David’s unwittingly limited understanding of the Reckoners, which later prove false: Two out of five Reckoners on the team are Epics, with only one by accident. Especially considering that the organization’s founder is an Epic, Sanderson leaves plenty of space for David—and, through first-person narration, readers—to repeatedly adjust his assumptions.

“And yet […] we are afraid to fight the most powerful. And so, the domination of the tyrants continues. So long as they do not fall, the others will not truly fear us. They will fear Steelheart, Obliteration, and Night’s Sorrow. If we will not face creatures such as these, is there any hope that others will someday stand up to them?”

Individual Reckoners have varied ideas about their organization’s purpose. While some believe they should only target mid-level threats to live to fight another day, Abraham’s distinctly poetic dialogue inspires the other Reckoners toward real world change.

“Trying to reconcile the joking, storytelling blowhard with the image of a police officer still on his beat. Still serving after the city government had fallen, after the precinct had been shut down, after everything had been taken from him.”

This scene adds sincere depth to Cody’s otherwise comedic character. While the Reckoners individually have varied personalities, they share a common aspiration: justice. Cody, Prof, and Abraham in particular dedicated their talents to the common good before Calamity, and they refused to abandon their vocation when the Epics changed the world.

“‘I was planning to sneak into the palace and shoot him.’ ‘Sneak into the palace,’ Abraham said flatly. ‘Uh, yes.’ ‘And shoot Steelheart.’ ‘I was ten,’ I said. ‘Give me a little credit.’ ‘To a boy with aspirations like that, I would extend my respect—but not credit. Or life insurance.’”

The snippy, comedic dialogue shows how David’s ambitions make him act recklessly, though this example draws on his younger self’s lacking experience to reach this extreme example. Despite Abraham’s “life insurance” comment reading like a joke, the exchange suggests that David’s impetuousness could potentially make him untrustworthy.

“But don’t get it into your mind that we’re revolutionaries, that we’re going to tear down what’s out there and put ourselves in its place. The moment we start to think like that, we derail. We want to make others fight back. We want to inspire them. But we dare not take that power for ourselves. That’s the end of it. We’re killers. We’ll rip Steelheart from his place and find a way to pull his heart from his chest. After that, let someone else decide what to do with the city. I want no part of it.”

Prof is acutely aware of his purpose and its boundaries. He fears that if he broadens his objective, he will have to compromise his priority: killing Epics and, particularly, Steelheart. While his stance seems coldhearted in this passage, readers later learn that Prof is an Epic, and he must avoid political power to abate the temptations of his Epic nature.

“The [tensor’s] buzzing was like the eager purr of a muscle car that had just been started, but left in neutral. That was another of Cody’s metaphors for it; I’d said the sensation felt like an unbalanced washing machine filled with a hundred epileptic chimpanzees. Pretty proud of that one.”

David’s metaphors are most obviously terrible when compared directly to a fitting analogy, and Sanderson pointedly juxtaposes these similes to accentuate that stylistic choice with Cody and David’s respective characterizations. Cody’s simile uses a familiar experience to help readers better imagine the scene, serving the purpose of literary metaphors. On the other hand, David combines unrelated ideas—washing machines, epilepsy, and chimpanzees—resulting in a (somewhat appropriately) chaotic analogy.

“I was a little more nervous this time. Were we going to find random scientists and workers just hanging around all over? What would we do if someone surprised us? What if it was some innocent custodian? For the first time in my life, I found myself nearly as worried about what I might end up doing as I was about what someone might do to me.”

David struggles to reconcile the ends and the means as he endangers the same people he wants to protect. In the beginning, revenge alone drives David’s actions, and he will sacrifice any part of himself to achieve it. His newly realized responsibility for collateral casualties makes him question his methods for the first time.

“Megan stayed on board and didn’t let her feelings distract her from her job. She might not agree that Steelheart needed to die, but from what I’d pried from her, she believed in fighting the Epics. She was like a soldier who believed a certain battle wasn’t tactically sound, yet supported the generals enough to fight it anyway.”

Megan’s character contrasts David’s in this regard: Though both have a well-defined objective, Megan’s feelings don’t drive her actions while vengeance almost single-handedly motivates David. As their characters develop, both inch toward the center of this spectrum, though they remain within these general categories.

“There aren’t any answers to be found. There are no good choices. Submissiveness to a tyrant or chaos and suffering. In the end I chose the second, though it flays my soul to do so. If we don’t fight, humankind is finished. We slowly become sheep to the Epics, slaves and servants—stagnant. This isn’t just about revenge or payback. It’s about the survival of our race. It’s about being the masters of their own destiny. I choose suffering and uncertainty over becoming a lapdog.”

Within the narrative tension between chaos and order, Prof errs toward chaos. He associates order with stagnation, evoking images of drudgery and lifelessness. This worldview shows how Prof, at his core, doesn’t believe a submissive life is worth living.

“‘Your father believed the best about people,’ Prof said. ‘[…] If, in [killing Deathpoint], he let Steelheart live…well, Steelheart hadn’t done terrible things at that point. Your father couldn’t know the future. You can’t be so frightened of what might happen that you are unwilling to act.’ I stared into my father’s dead eyes, and I found myself nodding. ‘That’s the answer,’ I whispered. ‘It’s the answer to what you and Megan were arguing about.’ ‘It isn’t her answer,’ Prof said, ‘But it’s mine. And maybe yours too.’”

If Prof and Megan’s views respectively represent chaos and order, then David falls somewhere in the middle, leaning toward Prof’s view. He recognizes that chaos will hurt many people, but submitting to Steelheart’s order eliminates potential for improvement. Nothing scared David when his only focus was revenge, but now completing the mission—knowing that he has more to lose—requires more courage.

“Jewelry was practically worthless these days. There were a couple Epics who could create gemstones. ‘Maybe,’ Cody said, ‘but gold remains a standard.’ He scratched his head. ‘Not sure why, though. You can’t eat it, which is all most people are interested in.’ ‘It’s familiar,’ Prof said. ‘It doesn’t rust, it’s easy to shape, and it’s hard to fake. There aren’t any Epics who can make it. Yet. People need to have a way to trade, particularly across kingdom or city boundaries.’”

Sanderson often incorporates small worldbuilding elements to make the dystopian setting more tangible to readers. These details about jewels and gold don’t advance the plot, but they adhere to this world’s logic and show small but natural consequences of the Epics’ presence.

“‘Piping is the most sublime sound y’all have ever heard,’ Cody explained, gesturing widely as we walked down the corridor toward the hideout. ‘A sonorous mix of power, frailty, and wonder.’ ‘It sounds like dying cats being stuffed into a blender,’ Tia said to me.”

Cody and Tia’s description of bagpipes reflects their personalities: Cody likes making bizarre comments for the reaction’s sake while Tia is straightforward and businesslike. The juxtaposition of these different styles—romantic idealism and insistent reality—work together to create a comedic punchline.

“‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I feel like a brick made of porridge.’ She looked at me, brow scrunching up. The van’s cab fell silent. Then Megan started to laugh. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It makes sense! Listen. A brick is supposed to be strong, right? But if one were secretly made of porridge, and all of the other bricks didn’t know, he’d sit around worrying that he’d be weak when the rest of them were strong. He’d get smooshed when he was placed in the wall, you see, maybe get some of his porridge mixed with that stuff they stick between bricks.’ Megan was laughing even harder now, so hard she was actually gasping for breath.”

David’s metaphor is another example of dissimile. In this instance, his analogy requires too much explanation to be an effective standalone simile. He makes the comparison even more ridiculous by personifying the “brick of porridge” and its self-consciousness around the other fictitious bricks. Megan’s persistent laughter ensures that the mood remains lighthearted rather than awkward.

“‘I’m not shooting an unconscious fellow, Prof,’ Cody said. ‘Not even an Epic.’ ‘Then leave him.’ I was torn. Epics deserved to die. All of them. But why was he unconscious—what were they doing with him? Was it even Conflux?”

David continues deliberating what lines he would cross to take revenge on Epics, but Cody’s law enforcement background obliges him to uphold a particular protocol. Again, this decision shows how individual members of the Reckoners have varied personal moral codes and disagree on how much collateral damage they’d willingly risk.

“[…] I think I fell for you that first day. […] Am I in love? Is it just infatuation? We’ve known each other for less than a month, and you’ve treated me like dirt about half that time. But that day fighting Fortuity and that day in the power plant, it seems like we had something. […] For what it’s worth, thank you for making me care about something other than Steelheart. I don’t know if I love you. But whatever the emotion is, it’s the strongest one I’ve felt in years. Thank you.”

David’s rambling monologue to Megan’s unconscious body is important to her humanization after she reincarnates. David’s dialogue creates a role reversal: Previously, Megan made David more empathetic by helping him care about more than revenge, and now David’s message will remind Firefight of her capacity for empathy.

“None of us had chairs [in the new hideout]; we were all just sitting on our bedrolls. Even though this hideout was smaller than the other, it felt empty to me. There weren’t enough of us.”

This line creates an emotional impact by combining physical and emotional realities. Physically, the new room is smaller, but emotionally, the Reckoners are missing a key member of their team. David’s phrasing prioritizes the emotional reality, suggesting that any physical space is too large without Megan’s presence.

“A battery. […] A slave. It’s all right, you can say it. I’m quite accustomed to it. I’m a valuable slave, which is actually an enviable position. I suspect it won’t be too long before he finds us and kills you all for taking me. […] I am sorry about that. I hate it terribly when people fight over me.”

Edmund not only provides information about Steelheart’s operations but also overstreet perspectives, which readers only hear secondhand through Edmund and Megan. He acknowledges the privilege of being a “valuable slave” because that position ensures safety, which sounds strikingly similar to Megan’s argument. Importantly, the only two characters who respect Steelheart’s administrative value have lived in the overstreets.

“The emergence of knowledge of the tensors would change the way the Reckoners worked. Even if we beat Steelheart, they had lost something great—no longer would they be able to sneak into places unexpectedly. Their enemies would be able to plan, watch, prepare. I’d brought about the end of an era. They didn’t seem to blame me, but I couldn’t help feeling some guilt.”

At the beginning, when David focused only on his own agenda, he convinced the Reckoners to assassinate Steelheart despite the threat to their organization’s secrets and survival. Now that he cares about the team, he feels guilty for sabotaging their advantages for his personal objectives. This guilt further demonstrates how David learns to acknowledge the bigger picture and his actions’ implications.

“I was a fifth-grade science teacher. […] An epic destroyed the school. It…it was still in session. […] The kids at the school called me Prof too. It always sticks, though I’m not a professor—I didn’t even go to graduate school. I only ended up teaching science by accident. It was the teaching itself that I loved. At least, I loved it back when I thought it would be enough to change things.”

Though Prof regards his pre-Calamity self with compassion and nostalgia, he primarily remembers his naivety and refuses to fall under that trap again, resulting in the hard edges that David sees. The school’s destruction informs his conviction that change doesn’t happen through fanciful ideals, but through forceful action. Additionally, his educator role makes him feel protective of the world as though it were his own classroom.

“That beautiful glow, that powerful something beyond. There are things greater than the Epics, I thought. There is life, and love, and nature herself. […] Where there are villains, there will be heroes. My father’s voice. Just wait. They will come. […] Sometimes, son, you have to help the heroes along…”

Consistent with superhero tropes, David reflects on the meaning of life just when all hope seems lost, directly before the villain’s fall. David realizes that the world is bigger than him or even Steelheart, and it is worth fighting for. He prepares to sacrifice himself, knowing not only that the impending explosion would kill him too, but also that his actions will pave the way for other heroes to follow.

“My father didn’t fear you. […] You want us to be afraid […] because you can only be hurt by someone who doesn’t fear you. […] But such a person doesn’t really exist, do they? You make sure of it. Even the Reckoners, even Prof himself. Even me. We are all afraid of you. Fortunately I know someone who isn’t afraid of you, and never has been.”

David confronts Steelheart, finally confident in the truth and Steelheart’s next move. The classic hero’s speech ties together several thematic threads—especially fear, darkness, and power—and reveals the story’s greatest mystery, sending the narrative arc to its climactic peak.

“‘It’s so hard to fight,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘The more you use it, the…Arrrrr!’ He knelt down, holding his head. He was quiet for a few minutes, and I let him be, not knowing what to say. When he raised his head, he seemed more in control. ‘I give it away,’ he said, ‘because if I use it…it does this to me.’”

The way Sanderson breaks up the dialogue with tags and action makes dramatic scenes feel like reading a comic book, which often intersperses illustration panels between phrases of a character’s sentence. The particular placement of tags—especially in the final sentence—emphasizes a suspense-building dramatic pause where an illustration panel might break up the dialogue.