Across the last few months, I took an interest in the rather significant event that was the April 1999 Columbine Massacre (see here, here, and here). After reading three different books on the topic, I had considered myself done with the whole matter for the meantime… until I discovered Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun.
The two-star rating above should already imply how I feel about this novel, which is to say not overly positive. I feel that it very much trivialises school shootings whilst simultaneously undermining and piggybacking off of Columbine. I mean, it’s a short novel released sixteen-and-a-half months after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s very impactful and, for readers in or around September 2000, recent shooting spree.
There are only two credible things about this novel. First, it tries to be interesting; secondly, the author feigns nobility and good intentions from the get-go. Regarding that latter point on nobility, Give a Boy a Gun references six-year-old Kayla Rolland in its opening Dedication, a young girl shot by a schoolmate in February 2000. Strasser—in the novel I’m about to rip apart—cites that the purpose of this novel is for ‘ending youth violence’ and uses Rolland’s name as the latest in a line of motivators for such a cause. Twenty-four years later and youth violence is more prevalent than ever, so a lot of good that opening did. All it seemed to do was link a poor child’s name to a disgrace of fiction.
What makes Strasser’s work interesting is how it is told. Give a Boy a Gun is an epistolary work. This means much of the novel is recounted in the form of letters and witness accounts, and the whole lot is poised to feel like a real chronology and investigation into a real-world shooting.
This would almost work, if that phony nobility didn’t spur Strasser to regularly interject with non-fictional statistics and quotes from public figures and large organisations, as if their inclusion is going to do anything to change youth violence. All these inclusions did was make the novel’s youth violence message too heavy-handed, and do little else beyond interrupting the flow of dialogue and reminding readers that it’s all fiction, removing any ability to become absorbed in its thematically serious narrative.
Yet, the way it truly undermines Columbine is not in its faux nobility, nor its terrible stop-start flow and laughably short chapters, but rather its complete aping of Columbine in manner that shows zero delicacy towards the complexity and heartache of Colorado’s tragedy. We have an author that, exactly 501 days after 20 April 1999, trivialises the entire story and events of that day in a poor parody-like take on the subject matter. Moreover, has the audacity to create two main characters, a mass shooting duo, that very much mirror the public personas of the Columbine shooters.
The story itself is complete schlock, a Hollywood simplification of extremely real factors and events that could cause a school shooting. I’m giving a spoiler warning, because I’m about to give a very brief synopsis of a relatively short work that has little going for it:
The two (dare I say) anti-hero characters, Gary and Brendan, are victims of repeated bullying while they attend the generically-named Middletown High School. After enough of this malarkey, they do what any sensible pair of chaps do; steal semi-automatic firearms from a neighbour and shoot up their high school during a big dance. Oh yes, they also make bombs and specifically target the jocks, and they also don’t kill everyone on sight, but rather bask in their power fantasy and effectively play God with their classmates. If you know even the most basic gist about Columbine and its two shooters, I am sure many beats of my sardonic synopsis feel familiar.
That’s all I really have to say regarding the story. It’s not gripping, it’s not particularly moving, and it certainly isn’t shocking. I imagine it would be to someone in a very recently post-Columbine world, but anyone with any knowledge about true-crime will not be phased or dramatically disturbed by anything in Strasser’s novel. Some online sources do say that Give a Boy a Gun is intended for younger readers, which, other than being a questionable demographic for a fictional school shooting story, would explain the lacklustre amount of depth to this work.
The real reason this review is smearing Strasser’s novel so strongly is because of its aforementioned trivialisation of Columbine, namely its perpetrators. Strasser has zero shame in simplifying the two real and complex people that were Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris into very one-note and almost cliché depictions of school shooters, which positions the pair as nothing more than real-world villains with no deeper personality or aspects to acknowledge. If you are in any doubt that Strasser has ripped off the Columbine shooters, I can prove it with some comparisons between his characters and their infamous archetypes.
Gary is a discount Dylan Klebold. He’s shy but gifted, has an overprotective mother, is good with computers and very interested in them, was never aligned with any assumptions or capabilities to be violent by others. In his suicide letter, he is marginally more delicate and outwardly depressive. All of these were exaggerated and generalised traits of Klebold in the aftermath of Columbine; a shy and gifted boy who is believed to have been coerced into violence as a form of escape from his misery. Even Gary’s suicide, a gunshot to the left side of the head from a semi-automatic firearm, mirrors Klebold’s—a shot through the left temple that left him (presumably) spasming in a vegetative state until his lungs filled with blood, ultimately drowning him.
Brendan is a knock-off Eric Harris. He plays soccer, he’s outwardly uptight and visibly paranoid, he moved to a new town and struggled to fit in, has a strange fixation with justice and loves playing Doom, got car rides with a classmate to school, even wanted to join the Army. These are all things that were known and observed about Harris following Columbine. Even in Brendan’s suicide letter, which is vengeful and edgy, it apes Harris’ journal writings, where he is quite over the top and playing into his ‘godlike’ persona of Reb. The only way that Brendan really differs from Harris is their fate. Harris blew his head wide open with a shotgun, and ejected most of his brain in the process, whereas Brendan is overrun and beaten to a brain-dead state in the novel.
I could draw more similarities that Strasser makes to Harris and Klebold, but I feel that I have made my case. And I have done it without mentioning the many real-world quotes from 1999 included in the novel that are specifically about Columbine. Sure, the author was undeniably using Columbine’s shooters as a basis, and perhaps wanted the connection and similarities to be obvious, but it totally shoots the novel in the foot by generalising everything.
I see a novel that dramatises and simplifies much of the real issues that Klebold and Harris went through, without really acknowledging how multi-faceted and varied a real person is (regardless of their legacy or right to sympathy). If you based reality entirely off of Give a Boy a Gun, which seems to pinpoint most of the blame on bullying and interest in violent media, as well as others’ ignorance to warning signs, I am sure most teenagers would be classified as high-risk potential mass shooters. Yet, in reality, it is only a select few that ever carry out attacks on their schools.
Strasser’s work is simply too lacking in elegance and sophistication for the subject it is trying to tackle, making the author’s aims to ‘[end] youth violence’ seem laughable. For starters, I don’t think having the fictional shooters specifically hate jocks (something that Klebold and Harris were, in a somewhat overblown manner, noted for) is a good message to send. In fact, the whole novel seems to levy blame at everything and everyone else, rather than the two teenage perpetrators… again, I question whether or not that’s the right message to be putting out. Because you live in an area where people own guns, that naturally means you’re likely to become a mass murderer as a child?
If we analyse Klebold and Harris, who took thirteen innocent lives with them, in the same externally-influenced way, does being bullied and coming from a semi-rural gun-owning location make them blameless? I doubt anyone would ever support such a claim for the Columbine killers, making Strasser’s portrayal of responsibility and motivation for shootings poorly grounded.
I do want to clarify that I am painting Give a Boy a Gun with broad strokes. Gary and Brendan are occasionally different from the real people they are based on, even if it is only in minor ways. Additionally, I am sure the author doesn’t actually intend for them to appear like blameless victims propelled on a doomsday course because of bullying and *gasp* violent video games, and *another gasp* having neighbours who own semi-automatic firearms, but it is so badly written that it appears that way. It seems to make Gary and Brendan out to be two kids who felt they had no other choice, but could conveniently nab some nearby guns and literally go ballistic thanks to all that super advanced training they got from violent games and films.
Give a Boy a Gun appears to be a roundabout campaign against bullying, violent video games like Doom and Postal, violent films, and the Internet as a whole. Gun ownership, too. It falters greatly by employing stereotypical situations like jocks being bad to nerds; subtly suggesting that quiet kids are all equally disturbed, depressed, or angry; implying violent video games and the Internet are root causes for murderous crime; or giving the impression that any kid with access to a gun, or even just proximity to one, will immediately shoot up their school.
The title, Give a Boy a Gun, doubles down on that last point by implying that any underage male will immediately partake in a violent shooting if handed a firearm. This silent assertion spits in the face of children’s moral/emotional/spiritual intelligence and integrity. Yes, many young males are angry or depressed, and many are rash or impulsive, but it does not mean every young boy wants to gun down all that has ever caused him grief. Even those who believe they want to may quickly back out of an opportunity to do so when their morality and senses kick in.
I interpret Give a Boy a Gun as a rather lazy and disrespectful cash grab that sought to capitalise on the Columbine flames that were being stoked by copycat, or coincidentally similar, attacks. It seems to aim to shock the reader, because it certainly doesn’t give a realistic portrayal of children and their personal struggles. Instead, it just provides very lacklustre mimicry of the two most infamous school shooters.
The only thing I can praise it for, and all that keeps it above the one-star territory, is the epistolary storytelling. Aside from being a rarely used style of narration and delivery, it had the added benefit of keeping Strasser’s diabolical publication shorter than what a traditional literary approach would have resulted in.
But, before I wrap his review up for good, I need to note that this novel definitely possesses anti-gun and pro-censorship agendas. I understand that Columbine spawned a panic around gun control and violent media—children definitely should not be exposed to firearms in 99% of cases, nor have 24/7 unrestricted access to violent media—but Strasser’s novel might as well say, ‘Gee, if only we banned that dastardly Doom game and all these “smaller and easier to hide” semi-automatic weapons. Right, my fellow upset Americans?’ because that’s basically all it wants to say in a political sense. And yes, ‘smaller and easier to hide’ is a genuine quote from the book, which the author italicised to emphasise. Fiction with blatant agendas only work for readers who want to exist in a self-affirming echo chamber.
Do I recommend it? No, but I do think it’s worth skimming over so you can understand just how out of touch and unintentionally comical this novel is. The only vaguely quality part is the depiction of the shooting towards the end of the novel, but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the novel’s faults and let-downs. I cannot believe that this novel was given so much praise for depicting a generalised, stereotypical school shooting.
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