Started and finished this book today, it is a quick read and I was impressed by how engaging it is. I realize this book is 10 years old now but I'm interested in getting others' thoughts about it. I checked out the GoodReads reviews which seem to all go along with the assumption that Sean's "accident" was a failed suicide attempt.
What Sean did wasn't an accident, but it also wasn't a suicide attempt. My reading of the book is that he got exactly the outcome he was aiming for. Here's why:
- When Sean meets the teenagers in the parking lot, he's asked what the worst part of his disfigurement is. His answer is not the social isolation, the stares, the inability to eat food normally, but the hearing issue caused by the injury. The teens are incredulous and ask him if he would rather have a "more normal" face or have his hearing fixed, and he says he doesn't know anymore.
- Sean's total disinterest in having any reconstructive surgery that could give him a normal life. This might be interpreted as reluctance to have a more experimental procedure done on his face, but I feel like most people in his situation would jump at the chance anyway.
- He says of his relationship with his father, "I did something terrible to his son." This is a really striking line highlighting, in my view, that Sean killed the boy who was a normal teenager and is now someone else.
- Similarly, when he is in the hospital, he tells his mother, "I was going to be lonely anyway." At another point in the book, he suggests that he always seems to know exactly how things will play out.
- Sean hypothesizes that, if things had been different, if he hadn't decided to shoot himself, he might have gotten some mail-order swords and gone on a rampage and become an infamous killer. Or, equally likely, he might have hung them on his wall and eventually outgrown them. He imagines telling his mother, "Do whatever you want with them. I'm not that person anymore."
- He has a perfect moment with Kimmy, kissing her and seeing the beauty of his area, right before he shoots himself. I interpret this as him realizing that, even in that beautiful moment, he still felt cut off and isolated.
- Finally, the very last scene of the book. He pulls the trigger, crying and wondering if that's because he really wants to "do this" or really doesn't want to, but it doesn't matter. The book ends: "Okay. There it is. I am here now. And then I laid down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond my door."
To me, all of this paints a fairly clear picture of Sean's motivations. After kissing Kimmy, he realized that he would always be a loner, alienated from society and self-isolating. By mutilating his face in such a dramatic way, he externalizes that alienation. Nobody questions why he lives by himself and has no romantic partners or friends. His parents don't pester him to get out of the house more. He doesn't have to try to go to college, date, get a normal job, or any of other adult things that he knows he will struggle with. He frees himself from the expectations of being a person that he is not, and becomes his "true self." "Okay. There it is. I am here now."
In his view, the alternatives were to live that life that he wasn't meant for, or to go on a homicidal rampage, and even contemplates killing his parents. But, in the end, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, as he emphasizes in the letter to Carrie's parents, so he decides to just turn the gun on himself. Much like the choose your own adventure system of Trace Italian, he chose his own life on his own terms.
by Ectophylla_alba