… and I have one main gripe with it. First of all I’ll just say, I don’t think the memoir like that should be judged objectively by its literary merit, it’s obviously extremely subjective take on the immensely personal and emotional subject. The author is a mother of one of Columbine killers and is describing her journey of coming to terms with what happened and why.
I think Sue Klebold did wonderful job of staying respectful to the victims and their families, of describing her grief and recognizing her shortcomings. She clearly still is in denial about her son, but it’s hard to fault a mother for it, and she clearly put a lot of mental work into overcoming her grief and trying to understand why such tragedy happened.
She did a great deal of introspection and eventually came to the conclusion that sometimes you just can’t blame one person, one issue, sometimes things aren’t as clear cut as some people want them to be. You can’t just say “it was video games/music/gun culture/church/bullying”, no more than you can say “they were literally devils and their parents turned blind eye, it should’ve been obvious”. It’s something that has potential of happening to anyone, and something that can be missed by anyone if the other person wants to hide it from you.
So in the light of those conclusions, her treatment of Harris’ parents really saddened me. How can you at the same time acknowledge how painful it was for people to pronounce you a bad parent, a terrible person, and then go on and suggest multiple times one of the perpetrators was just another victim of his psychopathic friend? If you think there’s more depth to what Dylan did, shouldn’t this be also true for Eric? It’s really hard for me to understand how on one hand she can say that her son was a real person and had a real good side of him and she wants him remembered this way, but on the other she never acknowledges humanity of his friend, going as far as suggesting he was almost fully responsible for what happened.
It really rubbed me the wrong way. Both boys were murderers and possible psychopaths. I feel tremendously sorry for the victims and their families, but also for families of the perpetrators, that were left with harrowing task of trying to understand why this had happened and what could’ve been done to prevent it. But that goes for both families. You can’t call for more sympathy for yourself and your family, for greater understanding of who Dylan was, and at the same time reduce the other perpetrator to psychopathic maniac who influenced your son.
It comes off as even more hypocritical when you learn more about what happened at Columbine, the fact that Dylan was the first to mention the killing spree, that unlike Eric he never expressed remorse or apologized for his actions.
And it’s not just about Eric himself, Sue goes to great lengths to describe how hard it was for her to apologize to families of the victims, how she couldn’t find the right words, how grief was so strong she was unable to formulate coherent sentences, but then she goes on into describing how letters of apology from Harris family were inadequate and cold. Umm, maybe they were dealing with the same feelings you were? If you don’t like to be judged by the quality of your apology letters, why go on and judge the other family, I just…
Denial and grief are terrible and powerful emotions and I try not to judge Mrs Klebold too harshly, her family went through a lot. I just feel, if you ask for compassion, try to also show it to the family living through the same nightmare you are. Ultimately both boys were monsters feeding off each other, if you want us to see humanity in one, have grace to see humanity in the other. If you can’t, the general message just falls flat.
by Terrible_Vermicelli1