Essay Questions

Do you think that bullies were responsible for causing the shooting?

Leonard was very emotionally disturbed and obviously being bullied contributed to this. However, other key characters are also bullying victims: Cam even says that he understands Leonard's actions although he doesn't agree with them, because as a kid who was bullied too he understands an instinctive need to be heard and to exact revenge. This is really the point; Leonard suffered through a set of circumstances that made him want to make everyone hear him and to get his revenge on his bullies, but it was ultimately his choice to take s gun and attempt to massacre his fellow students. So whilst being bullied might have made him want to do something to redress the balance, nobody forced h to pull the trigger, which is why although the bullies contributed to his state of mind they did not cause the shooting itself.

Would Leonard have been different if not for being bullied?

It is hard to say whether Leonard would still have turned into a shooter if he had not been bullied in school because his life circumstances were still somewhat volatile; his family would best be described as dysfunctional and Leonard also felt in-heard there as well. He was using drugs and also developing a fascination with guns. He also made a list of his enemies. Much of this behavior seems to extend beyond a reaction to bullying and seems almost like a schizophrenic pattern of behavior. It seems likely that Leonard, a very troubled teen without a support system, would have felt isolated and paranoid enough to become the shooter anyway; being bullied probably gave his anger more of a precise target and also made his mental state unravel further.

How does the author make this novel appear to be a report of the investigation into a real shooting?

The book does not seem like a novel. For one thing there are so many points of reference - reports, interviews, police blotters - that it seems to be an investigative file rather than a fictionalized account of a school shooting. Hearing from so many different characters and seeing so many different points of view makes it much less novel-like; after all, how many points of view do we really see things from in a novel? It is more common for a review or a report to read like this. The style of writing is also very factual and not particularly embellished with descriptive prose. This again makes it more factual than fictional. Lastly the resemblance that the scenario bears to the Columbine School shooting is so strong that it is difficult to see the novel as anything but an accurate investigation into the circumstances of what happened rather than a fictional account of a shooting told from the perspective of multiple fictional characters.