Book Analysis of Columbine by Dave Cullen

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 689
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 05 April 2022

The Columbine massacre is one of the biggest highschool shooting to have ever happened in the USA. Dave Cullen, conducted a 10 years long  research and its outcome was published in a book about this tragic event. He published this non- fiction book that can be classified as both journalism and as a biography on April 6th 2009, 10 years after the shooting happened in 1999.The shooting happened  at the Columbine highschool in the town of Columbine Colorado . The book Columbine has won many awards including the Top Educational Book for the year 2009.  

When Eric is  young he’s  fascinated by guns and war. This fascination slowly turns into anger issues and violence. By the time Eric is 16 he’s obsessed with nazis, rape and hurting people in general. Immediately after he turns 16, he moves to a small city called Columbine where he meets his friend Dylan, who later also participates in the crime. Dylan and Eric are inseparable, so when Eric suggests that they plan a highschool shooting, Dylan immediately agrees. Dylan asks his girlfriend, Rachel, if she wants to buy the guns for them as they weren’t 18 yet while she was. After a while Rachel finally manages to get the guns and they start building bombs because they want the infllict the most damage possible. First he decides to film the process of making the bombs while also explaining why he wants to be a mass shooter. In those films he talks about his childhood and says that nobody ever understands him. Finally he states that he was bullied and that he wanted revenge. Meanwhile Dylan is planning the attack. On April 20th 1999, a week after Eric turns 18, they were highschool shooters. Dylan didn’t want to do it, but Eric is very persuasive and convinces him to stick to the plan. They walk into the Columbine highschool and Eric starts shooting. The first victim is Rachel, Dylan's girlfriend. Dylan didn’t shoot often, only when Eric commands him to. On the other hand Eric shoots as much as possible. He shoots at teachers, students, and whoever passes by. Eventually the police arrive at the scene, but by that time Eric and Dylan had already killed 13 people. When Eric hears the police coming, he tells Dylan that it is time. Dylan asks: “Time for what?” Eric responds is: “Time to kills ourselves.” They both kill themselves before the police have the chance to arrest them. The survivors, all traumatized, run away from the crime scene. Weeks after the crime, the kids collectively decide that they want to go to church and find great comfort  and a many of them convert to christanity. At last, Cullen writes about the mental problems Eric and Dylan have. He says that nothing could have been done to prevent such a horrific crime. They are just psychopaths. 

The two main characters in the book are Dylan and Eric. Eric has a very strong personality, he is determined and quite stubborn. Dylan is the complete opposite of Eric, Dylan is very easy-going and  smart and got accepted into Yale. Eric on the other hand was dumb, he didn’t get good grades and didn’t understand most of what Dylan said. Dylan grew up in a jewish family, which is suprising as he ideolized nazis. Eric’s father was in the military, which is why he had to move every two, three years which frustrated Eric a lot. 

This book has 3 main chapters, the first chapter talks about the crime itself, the second chapter talks about Dylan and Eric upbringing. And finally  the third chapters explains the coping mechanisms of the survivors. 

Dave Cullen is an american journalist, born in Chicago, Illinois in 1961 which makes him 61 years old. He only writes non-fiction books such as Columbine. He has won many awards and has appeared in “Vanity Fair”. 

I chose to read this book because it was the only book that was related to my topic. I would not recommend this book for people who don’t do their research because Cullen leaves out a lot of information. The topic itself is interesting but the book didn’t do it justice. It was very hard to understand and it is badly written. The people in the book were very interesting, especially the psychology behind them. Both Dylan and Eric have very complex personalities, which I find  very interesting.

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