Why They Did It! April 20, 1999, the Columbine massacre occurred. Thirteen people were shot and killed; many people were injured. The massacre was the works of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The boys built a plan in order to execute the massacre. They had been planning since their freshman year. Both boys had mental illnesses that made them want to kill people, but neither of the boys acted on their instincts until their senior year of highschool. Eric and Dylan went through a series of events that eventually pushed them over an edge and caused them to act on their murderous instincts, which led to them acting out their plan. A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder that manifests itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of …show more content…
Eric was a psychopath, which is a person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent behavior. Eric was angry, charming, and he engaged in criminal activities. Eric and Dylan hacked into the school computer and commandeered a list of locker combinations. They broke into the lockers and October 2, 1997, they were caught. Both received similar punishments: they were grounded for a month and they were forbidden contact with each other. However, they weathered their punishment and remained close. The punishment made the boys angry. Dylan began exploring the idea of a killing spree. Dylan wrote, “. . .I’ll go on my killing spree against anyone I want” (Cullen. 2009). Eric’s thinking had been evolving steadily in one direction since his freshman year: “kill everything and destroy the human race”(Cullen. 2009). After the punishment was over, Eric and Dylan continued to commit crimes as a pair. They got cockier. They stole more valuable merchandise and started testing their pipe bombs. The boys got caught stealing expensive equipment. They were taken to county jail. “The boys could have been charged with three felonies, including a class V, which carried up to
This angered Dylan and he put a gun on Will’s head. This shows Dylan was violent because he put a gun on Will’s head and was ready to kill him. The final place where the characters showed violence was when the people start attacking the new neighbors house. They start breaking things and they set the house on fire. This shows violence because the people are attacking a house and killing the people in it.
Labeling Dylan and Eric as psychopaths may have given some closure to those within Columbine, but it also highlighted the possibilities of the next killers planning the next
Eric was jealous of Dylan because Eric did not have a prom date and Dylan did. This is true 100%. However, Eric was just a psychopath that wanted to kill people deep down inside and acted weirdly. Eric had so many red flags that showed that killing people was on the list. Dylan was just depressed, wanted to die, and was shy.
Psychopath and sociopath are two terms classified as antisocial personality disorders in the world of psychology. Although many people have heard of these two terms, quite often people do not know what sets them apart from one another. A sociopath is defined as a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. The definition of psychopath is similar in being a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior. By looking at the definitions, these personality disorders appear very similar; however, there are specific attributes that are more specific to one of the two.
Journalist and author, Dave Cullen, in his book, Columbine, redefines how his readers understand the Columbine tragedy. His purpose is to illustrate the misconceptions Americans have of the shooting by explaining how these misconceptions came about and became rooted in Americans’ minds, although they were so unbelievably wrong. Cullen creates a blunt tone in order to get straight to the facts to show who Eric really was. Through his use of rhetorical devices in this passage, Cullen unravels that Eric was not a bullied outcast like so many believe, but a psychopath.
He killed two students and wounded a third before shooting his algebra teacher in the back. Three years later, April of 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold launched their infamous attack on Columbine High, Colorado, the slaughtering had continued. Threw the thirty-two killed and seventeen wounded by Seung- Hui Cho in Virginia Tech in 2007. What Gladwell has believed that “school shootings mostly involve young white men”, they were scattered instances of gunmen or bombers that has attacked schools in the years before Barry Loukaitis but had been lower profile.
Eric reportedly strangled and sodomized Derrick with a small stick. He also dropped large rocks on Derrick 's head. Eric was reported to have been bullied for his looks and had been
Through all the misery Eric went through in this book is unbelievable, he stays courageous to keep his friend Sarah safe and keep her feeling special, at least special to Eric. Eric was filled with courage throughout this whole book by staying calm in scary scenarios, staying fat for Sarah through all the years they have been friends and standing up to Virgil Byrnes while he was a major threat to Eric and Sarah. In
Columbine, by Dave Cullen is a non-fiction book documenting the horrific massacre which took place in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Not only does the writer give great detail about the shooting itself, he also gives and in depth look into the lives of the killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and their victims. The focus of this book is for the author to attempt to bring to light what really happened and hopefully gain better understanding as to why it all took place. Cullen, a journalist, begins an extensive nine year research in order to achieve awareness of the happenings before, during and after this tragic event. Entries from the perpetrators personal journals, stories from the ones who witnessed the shootings first hand, countless interviews from the victim’s families, as well as multiple other pieces of information give the reader an extremely up close and personal surrounding Columbine.
Chapters 1-19 Dylan and Eric planned to kills hundreds on April 20, 1999. They named the day of the shooting“Judgement Day”. The plans of the boys did not go has plan. Instead of blowing up the school they went around shooting people, because they did not go off. The police were there while they were shooting but did not actually go through the whole school until hours later.
Eric's sense of responsibility is further reinforced when he tells his family, "I think you're all beginning to pretend now that nothing much has happened." This quote indicates that Eric has become disillusioned with his family's attempts to dismiss or downplay their involvement in Eva Smith's/Daisy Renton's death.
Derrick was walking his way to the day camp when Eric Smith tricked him into Following him into the woods at a park near the day camp they were both supposed to be attending. When Eric tricked derrick to following him into the woods he savagely murdered him. When both Eric and Robbie were in the wood when Erick snuck up behind Robbie and started to strangle him, when Eric found out that he did not like that, He took a large rock and
The events that happened at Columbine High School were tragic. The columbine shooting would go down as the worst school shooting in American history. Thirteen people dead, twenty-four more people injured, on the dreadful afternoon of Tuesday, April 20, 1999 (Cullen, 2010). Parents in the time period never thought that anything like the shooting that happened at Columbine
On April 20, 1999, two disturbed teenage boys Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris began a killing rampage at Columbine High School in the suburban town of Littleton, Colorado. This was considered one of the worst school shootings to occur at that time. In the morning of April 20, before noon, the two juveniles had killed 13 people to include 12 students and 1 teacher; they also wounded another 23 people before turning the guns on themselves. This event would change the theories as to why school shootings would occur. (History)
Through reading “Columbine: Whose Fault is It?” by Marilyn Manson we can identify that the media had a great influence in the aftermath of the shooting, and who was the scapegoat for it, in other words who is to blame for what happened to those poor 13 innocent teenage kids. The Columbine High School massacre was an infamous event that went down as one of the worst shootings to happen to a high school in America. In 1999, a pair of two students named Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decided to assault a school in Colorado named Columbine High School. Their intent was unknown, and because of that, many people started speculating as to why the duo decided to shoot up the school.