From the initial uncertainty that launches the action of the narrative to the uncertainty of Felix’s fight to save prisoners’ lives in the closing chapters, the primary goals of every civilian caught in a war zone are to survive and to remain as unscathed as possible. Despite the relative youth and innocence of Gleitzman’s target audience, he nonetheless strives to fully describe and reveal the multitude of potential causes of death that civilians must face in a war in which they are not combatants.

Throughout the entire Once series and quite frequently in After, Felix Salinger has repeated close encounters with the possibility of dying. As a Jewish boy now accustomed to constant persecution, he knows that to be arrested by the Nazis or by the sympathizing Polish Secret Police will result in his immediate execution or relocation to a death camp. Yet this is not the only life-threatening situation that awaits him, for ironically, even potential allies like the Polish partisans can be deadly; they also threaten his life frequently, fearing he might reveal his knowledge of their location. Felix also exists under the shadow of many other threats as the novel progresses, for like other hidden Jewish children, Felix faces the possibility of instant death if those who shelter him die or become compromised, and he must also negotiate the more indifferent environmental dangers of frostbite, exposure, and hunger.