“In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can revenge” (Picoult). Those words are of the opening lines of Jodi Picoult’s best seller, Nineteen Minutes. Although this novel is heart wrenching, and cuts into the ‘grays’ of school shootings, it is anything but original. Lead character, Peter Houghton, is an almost perfect profile replication of 1999’s Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. A simple personaltiy analysis will reveal that both Peter and Columbine Shooters suffer from parental neglect, the violent virtual world, ruthless peers, as well as easy access to weapons. One of the most obvious characteristic of a school shooter would be parental neglect. This neglect was evident in both the Columbine shooters as well as fictional character, Peter Houghton. If Dylan and Eric’s parents took interest in their sons, they would have recognized the boys’ obvious dysfunctional thinking. Written on the front of Harris’s journal was, “I hate the fucking world.” (Rosenburg). He continued to write that he hates racists, martial arts experts, and people who brag about their cars. Through out the following pages, he continued to state what else he hates, including Star Wars fans, people who mispronounce words, and other ridiculous things. If parents believed that their sons were normal, the boy’s yearbook should have definitely raised a red flag. In 1988, the boys wrote about killing and retaliation, and even drew a picture of a person holding a gun with dead bodies surrounding them. A caption stated, “The only reason you’re still alive is because someone has decided to let you live.” Videotapes as well as guns and bombs were also in the boys’ rooms. Harris also made a w... ... middle of paper ... ...lize the obvious connections between Jodi Picoult’s character depiction of Peter and the Columbine Shooters. This connection does mark Picoult’s work as unoriginal, but the riveting novel allows a peek into a world that many choose to stay away from. Works Cited "Interview with Jodi Picoult." Interview by Book Browse. Book Browse. BookBrowse.com, 2011. Web. 20 May 2011. <.>. ++++"Nineteen Minutes." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 11 Apr. 2011. Web. 4 Apr. 2011. . +Picoult, Jodi. Nineteen Minutes: a Novel. New York: Atria, 2007. Print. +++++Rosenberg, Jenifer. "Columbine Massacre." About.com. Web. 19 Apr. 2011. . Towsend, Suzie. "School Shootings: Columbine & 19 Minutes." Web log post. Confessions From Suite 500. 30 June 2009. Web. 4 Apr. 2011.
This book was written by Dave Cullen published on April 6th, 2009. This story is a stated form of literature due to Dave Cullen directly stating in this story his reason for writing this book. Cullen was one of the first reporters to arrive to the site of this crime committed by Dylan and Eric, and since the day of this massacre Cullen had then spent ten years to publicize this very informative and crucial information for those who wanted the truth and nothing but the truth. I chose to read this book due to wanting to learn more information, and learn the hard facts and truth of this horrid massacre. I myself was in a similar situation, a school I had gone to had threats of being bombed and shot at, as well as students including myself being threatened to be harmed if they did specific actions or did nothing at all, and I was extremely adamant on learning more about what happened when things, such as the Columbine Highschool Massacre, do
High School as teenagers as the century was about to turn, they could have easily morphed into Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, taking innocent lives in a society that breeds contempt – if looking for it.
April 20th, 1999, Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, experienced a mass shooting. Thirteen people were injured and more than twenty were injured. Twelve were students and one was a teacher. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their high school for forty one minutes before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. School shootings are notorious for making headline news but in 1999, school shooting were not as prevalent as they are in the present day. The media blew up on the catastrophe that was Columbine and many questions were raised, who were these kids and why did they do this? Speculation arose about why they did it. Maybe they were bullied for being goth and social outcasts or maybe they
"In October 1997, a 16-year old in Pearl, Mississippi, first killed his mother and then went to school and shot nine students, two fatally; in December 1997 a 14-year old went to his school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killed three students and wounded five others; in March last year, two boys, aged eleven and thirteen, killed four girls and a teacher outside their school in Jonesboro, Arkansas; the next month a science teacher was shot dead, allegedly by a 14-year old, at a school dance in Edinsboro, Pennsylvania; last May in Fayetteville, Tennessee, an 18-year old student allegedly shot dead a classmate in the school car park; two days later, in Springfield, Oregon, a 15-year old opened fire at his high school, killing two teenagers and wounding more than twenty (police later found that his parents had been killed at home) ("Lesson"). On April 20th of this year, two teenagers enter their school and open fire, killing 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.
At 11:19 in the morning of April 19, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stood at the west entrance of Columbine High School preparing for the deadliest shooting in American school history. One of them yelled, "Go! Go!," and then the two pulled out their shotguns and began firing, killing two students almost immediately (Jefferson County 3). Harris and Klebold began moving through the school randomly shooting students, detonating pipe bombs, and yelling about how much fun they were having. While this was happening, Coach Dave Sanders and other heroes were frantically trying to get students out of harm's way. At 11:26, while running past the library warning students of the killers, Sanders was shot by one of the shooters. He made it into a science room where first aid was administered by students. He died several hours later in that same room. The worst killing took place in the library during a span of about eight minutes starting at 11:29. Ten students were killed and twelve others were wounded. After leaving the library, Harris and Klebold wandered around the school in movements that appeared to be "extremely random" (Jefferson County 18). They eventually returned to the library at about 12:08 and killed themselves. In 49 minutes, 14 students were left dead, one teacher was left dying, 23 people were injured, and an entire community's sense of safety and security was shattered.
The columbine massacre the day where no one is safe in school or out of school. The columbine massacre is about two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris both seniors 17 years old both two weeks before graduating they killed 12 students, one teacher, and 21 injured to their shooting on April 20, 1999. Both Dylan and Eric were some believe they were bullied by the sport teams in their school so they planned to kill the people who bullied them and other mostly anyone who gets in their way but that wasn’t really why the FBI he said that there target was everyone no one in pacify we will not get in to more details now. Dylan and Eric were both intelligent boys with solid parents and a good home and both had brothers younger than them. They played soccer, baseball, and both enjoyed to work on computers. Both boys were thinking on commit suicide on 1997 but instead started to plan a massacre in 1998 a year before it happened. Then the two boys had got into some trouble for breaking into a van on January 30, 1998 trying to steal some fuses and wires for bombs for them to make, but they got caught in trouble. So the court put them in a program called the juvenile diversion program, but even if they were there they were still planning the massacre and the court also put Eric in some angry management classes and people believe it worked but it didn’t he just did it to look like it work and both boys made it look like they were really sorry but they weren’t. Dylan and Eric both really hated everyone in their school and the court as well after they got caught breaking in to that van that’s when they really started to plan the massacre more and that’s when Harris started he’s journals no one really knows way but they didn’t hate a hand...
Shen, Aviva. "A Timeline of Mass Shootings in the US since Columbine." ThinkProgress RSS. Center for American Progress Action Fund, 14 Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
As the world recovers from recent school shootings, people wondered why these events have occurred. They are focused on drug use, violent society, video games, bullying, and mental issues to try and explain an unexplainable event. The idea that a person would shoot others for little or no reason gave little relief to the survivors.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were average teenagers. They were very social, they worked, and they partied. Where Eric was outgoing and charismatic, he could get out of any situation, Dylan was shy and had a temper; he would easily get mad over someone or something. They became friends quickly and did most of their activities together. They were “math wizards and technology hounds,” Eric played soccer, Dylan was a huge fan of the Boston Red Sox, and they worked at Blackjack Pizza. These two were a team; Eric craved attention and approval when Dylan was unreliable. No one knew that they had one big secret that was about to get detonated.(Cullen 8-10)
Robert Hare. “I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can,” he writes in a journal entry, just months before the attacks (Cullen 294). Eric had a major sadistic side to him and dreamt of destroying the human race entirely. He found himself to be superior to nearly everyone. Hare created a special screening test used for mainly juveniles that listed ten hallmarks of early psychopathy. Eric spoke about nine of the ten hallmarks on his website alone, some in grave detail. But Dylan, on the other hand, showed none of these traits, except possible persistent aggression. According to Dwayne Fuselier, the head profiler on the Columbine case, Dylan hardly seemed committed to the plan the boys had organized. His main goal was to kill himself, not other people. “.......Good god i HATE my life, i want to die really bad right now,” he writes in the end of a journal entry (174). This is one of several times he talks about suicide in his journal. Sometimes, his self-hatred strayed away from exclusively himself to other people. These were the times
In 1998, the US software industry sold $6.3 billion worth of video games (see Unknown). Not bad for an industry that didn't exist 25 years ago! Yet despite its continued growth, all is not well in the video game industry. School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Conyers, Georgia and many other towns have shocked the nation (see Malcolm). Understandably, grieving parents and sympathetic citizens are searching for a cause for this "outbreak" of youth violence. It is natural to assume, "when children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." (see Maker)
In Richard E. Miller’s essay, The Dark Night of the Soul, he first focuses on two teenage boys, boys who murderously rampaged through Columbine High School in Santee, California. Then he further discusses who was to blame, but most importantly would this event not had transpired if education had a more adamant impact if these young men had read more. Simply, would Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold killed if there was a more proactive approach to the educational system or government to “reduce or eliminate altogether the threat of the unpredictable or unforeseen [the amalgamation of elements that would result in a mass shooting] (Miller 421).”Additionally, if McCandless, a young man who eulogized the idealisms of authors that he used to make sense
On the day of the Columbine High School Massacre, previously to the attack both Erick D. Harris and Dylan B. Klebold placed a decoy bomb in a field; they had set the bombs to explode at 11:14 to distract police officials. The two boys then headed to the school and entered the commons shortly after 11:14 a.m. and went unnoticed carrying the big duffel bags with propane bombs inside of them. They placed the two twenty pound duffel bags in the cafeteria with the bombs set to explode at 11:17 a.m. They went back outside and armed themselves, they each strapped on an arsenal covered with a trench coat, a semiautomatic, a shotgun, and a backpack full of different types of bombs. The boys then set the timers on the bombs set inside each of their cars outside the school. The boys sat outside armed waiting outside for the bombs to explode and shoot any
“People are so unaware...well, Ignorance is bliss I guess… that would explain my depression.” (Klebold, Dylan). With that sentence, I divulged myself into the most horrendous, sad journal I have ever read, hoping to gain some insight into a disturbed young man’s mind. On April 20th, 1999, Dylan Klebold accompanied his friend, Eric Harris, in one of the most publicized and shocking school shootings of the modern day--The Columbine Massacre. With their sawed-off shotguns and godlike dispositions, the boys exacted their revenge not only on their peers, but on themselves. As the nightmare collapsed, and thirteen people lay dead, the questions began. How could two boys so young commit this crime? What forced them to be this way? For the Klebold family, one question remained: How had Dylan become involved in one of the crimes of the century?
Children start to act rebellious at home such as screaming, breaking objects, and even causing physical harm. However, when the minor encounters an argument with an individual they can physically harm or kill the individual. Such as, the massacre in high schools, the students that are bullied, plan to get back at the people by using violent actions. In other words the massacre shooting in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Littleton, Colorado, the high school students gained the knowledge of how to use a weapon to kill students. Since they have been harm by classmates, these students were furious which lead them to act violently towards their classmates by killing them. Like the article of “Did Video Games Train the School Shooters To Kill?: Determining Whether Wisconsin Courts Should Impose Negligence or Strict Liability in a Lawsuit Against the Video Game Manufactures” by Tara C. Campbell mentioned that a Marksman expert said the high school 's students have never fired a gun in their lives. He included, "pulled the trigger, instantly moved