Yes, the Ever-lasting contrast. Since existence has known, the 'fight' between good & evil has continued. Obviously, this fight can never end. Good things turn bad, bad things become good. My fav. contrasting symbol, because it is so true & means so much – the battle between good & bad never ends… Here we ponder on the tragedy of Dylan Klebold.
Dylan was coughing from the gunshot wound to the head and aspirating blood in his lungs. His body was involuntarily going through the reflects motions such as coughing as the body’s automatic response to purge the blood out of his airways. I would say that at this point, he was no longer conscious on the level of being aware of his body or sensing/suffering pain.
Thank you. 🙂 As cliche as this is going to sound.. we are all inherently ‘psychic’. Some are naturally a bit more ‘open’ or ‘aware’ than other. Some have a knack for specific sensing abilities in a particular area (i.e. scent, sensory, auditory, etc.) We all are imbued with these extra senses; it’s just more dormant within some of us but can be awakened, developed and honed.
I doubt either of the two got any sleep the night before so if you factor that in along with the major roller coaster-like experience they just had, the two boys are majorly crashing and burning.
Dylan is very much done with his last day on earth. It was most probably he who shouted euphorically in the halls: “today is the day I die!” The mindset to ‘have fun!’ was executed; he fulfilled his part of the mission with his friend. Even though he nor Eric managed to get the bombs to go off, it was good enough for him that they raised hell and did a fair amount of damage. It was good enough. The mission was complete, the end was near. He was now “in wait of his reward” Dylan appears so utterly empty in every way possible – mentally, emotionally, physically, so much so, that his feet lumber dejectedly up the stairs one. last. time. He is nothingness at this point, empty of everything. He is practically having an out-of-body experience and his shotgun is heavily dragging downward from his hand like a meaningless hunk of metal and wood. Dylan makes a weighted point of glancing back over his shoulder for one. last. time. to survey the Commons in the complete ruination that they were responsible for. Then..one last time to trudge up these damnable steps, so arduous..but each step – worth it, because soon it will be..“Time to die, time to be free, time to love” Everything about Dylan says “I didn’t like life too much, so I’m gone. Goodbye.”
For Eric, there is a major amount of disappointment and failure. The bombs..why the fuck didn’t they go off? Eric is exhausted and nearly spent but he’s also pissed that things did not unfold as he planned. He is fighting back that feeling of absolute and utter failure. There is an unrest about him, that fighters spirit about his demeanor. Unlike Dylan, for Eric, the mission is not yet over and done with until he has the last say. The building is surrounded and yet even that battle with the cops he hoped for hadn’t gone as planned. They were sitting ducks at this point. They could be captured at any moment. Fuck no. Time was of the essence. Eric exudes just that bit more life left in him. You can see a slight bit of purpose as he climbs the stairs with one determined bounce in his step. His gun swings down beside him with his stride. Eric is going to make sure to end this mission and on his own terms..whatever the fuck that may be. He “is not going down without some kind of fight” – his rebel’s mantra which he lives and breaths within the last eight minutes on the earth. Eric is direction and momentum, even in their last bit of chaotic improvisation. If suicide not by cop but by his own hand, so. be. it. Game over when he says it is. After that, who knows where the fuck he’ll blast himself to. Who cares.
Described Dylan Klebold as a quiet, Chemical Brother’s fan, and a member of the sound crew for various school plays and other functions. Whereas Klebold had wanted to go to college and study computer science, Heckler did not think he was smart enough. He identified his girlfriend as Robyn Anderson, but described the relationship as more of a friendship. He stated Klebold had a problem with alcohol, and as a result had been given the nickname, “Vodka”. Zachary Heckler saw Dylan Klebold at the prom, but did not talk to him very much during this time. He saw Dylan and Robyn Anderson at the after prom, but again, did not spend much time with them. Zachary Heckler did a phone thing with Dylan Klebold, Sunday night, April 18, 1999. He would telephone Dylan later at night and play ”Quake” or just be on the speaker phones with him, during which time they really did not talk with each other. He recalled passing Dylan Klebold in the hallway on Monday, April 19, 1999, and then Monday night, he called Dylan at approximately 22:30. Dylan Klebold told him that he was not in the mood to talk and wanted to sleep. Zachary Heckler said this was kind of odd because Dylan normally did not get off the phone until 00:30-1:00 hours on most nights.
Described Eric Harris as, in addition to being a racist, feeling superior to other people, and being frustrated with problems he was having at home. He said he had been told that Harris’ parents were very strict and did not approve of many things he was doing. Heckler explained that during the past summer, Harris had changed his manner of dress and the type of music he listened to. Heckler identified the German group Rammstein as being Harris’ favorite. He also identified a video game, “Postal”, as being a game Harris often played, and noted it involved nothing but killing. He said Harris did not have a steady girlfriend, and had asked Sabrina Cooley to attend the senior prom with him, but she had refused. Eric Harris stop liking him (Zachary Heckler) without any reason, but Zach continued to be good friends with Dylan Klebold. Zachary Heckler stated that in February 1999, he attended a party at Robyn Anderson’s home and that Eric Harris was also at this party. Zach stated that the two of them had both been at each other’s throats for some time, but that at this party, Eric Harris approached him and asked him how he was doing. Zach continued to say that they then began talking about things and about future plans. This was the last time that Zach talked to Eric Harris, except for passing each other in the hallways at school. Zachary Heckler said the last time he saw Eric Harris was at the ”after prom” but they did not talk.
“On three,” one of the boys says. His voice reeks of determination. The bright blond spikes of his hair stand out against a long coat, pants, and heavy-duty boots, all of them black.
“I… I… Okay,” says his partner, distraught under his own black garb.
Above them, a constellation of illuminated backpacks dangles from the ceiling, hanging over cafeteria tables ensconced in shadows.
“Eric Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay,” the first reads, drifting away from the scene to recall an assignment, which along with journal entries and poems the two have returned to throughout the play, moving nimbly between reality and introspection. “More and more we hear of shooting sprees and rampages on the news,” he says. “Almost any school shooting can be prevented in some way or another, we just have to spend the necessary time and money to figure out how.”
“What’d you get on it?”
“A 92.”
Moments later the shooters begin counting. The room goes dark. The audience knows what happened next.
The Erlkings, a play written by Nathaniel Sam Shapiro, depicts onstage the infamous shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who on April 20, 1999, killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others at Columbine High School before committing suicide. Theirs was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.
The off-Broadway play, directed by Saheem Ali, is based on an FBI report—a nearly 1,000-page compendium of the boys’ own writings and other evidence—as well as additional sources, like the many home videos Harris and Klebold made. It opens Sunday at the Beckett Theatre after a week of preview performances, with Em Grosland and James Scully in the leading roles.
In his playwright’s statement, Shapiro says he began researching Columbine after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and calls Columbine a “watershed moment” for those, like him, who were students in American schools at the time.
“The way we talked about Adam [Lanza] took me back to Eric and Dylan: these were ‘monsters’ and ‘no one could understand how they could do something like this,’” Shapiro writes. He says he pursued the play because “we will never prevent another Columbine by distancing ourselves from those who would perpetrate such an act and by refusing, out of fear, to understand them.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris, preparing pipe bombs in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg
Criticism from Columbine families
When Coni Sanders first caught wind of the project from a segment on the radio, she says she was shocked.
“He’s granting the wishes of these two boys who murdered my family,” says Sanders, whose father, William “Dave” Sanders, was a business teacher and coach at the school, the only staff member killed in the shootings. “I truly feel that he should have omitted the killers’ names.” Sanders published a strongly-worded op-ed about the play in the New York Post in early November that grew out of a post she had written on Facebook.
One of Harris and Klebold’s objectives was to be remembered forever, she says, and shooters after them have followed suit in an attempt to gain fame and notoriety. So putting Harris and Klebold onstage as Shapiro has, Sanders says, is not only “giving them exactly what they wanted,” but could also glorify their actions and encourage others to do the same. In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, she says, “the boy that killed their families idolized the boys that killed my family.”
After Columbine, Sanders became a forensic therapist, working with felons convicted of violent crimes and the mentally ill, “to better understand how Dylan and Eric got to where they are.” “I don’t see Eric and Dylan as monsters,” she says. “I see them as two boys who were broken.”
Shapiro insists that his play is meant to educate and prompt discussion rather than to glorify, and that the real-world scenario will help audiences connect to the issue.
“I don’t think Eric and Dylan would be so proud to see this play because it shows their humiliation, it shows their vulnerability,” he says, adding that the play highlights how Columbine is a more complex story than people would like to admit.
Peter Langman, a psychologist and scholar whose research focuses on school shooters, tells Newsweek: “My concern is that it might portray Harris and Klebold somehow as disaffected contemporary youth rather than portraying them as extreme psychological outliers.” While Klebold was slipping deep into a severe depression and exhibiting signs of schizotypal personality disorder, Langman says, Harris “was a very disturbed person, a psychopath.
“This is someone who admired Hitler and the Nazis. This is someone who had fantasies of raping girls he knew. This is someone who fantasized about mutilating human bodies and enjoying it. So he was not an ordinary kid, he was not just an innocent victim of the students who teased him.” Langman, who wrote the book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, says “Eric Harris no more represents his generation than Charles Manson represented his.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold (left) and Em Grosland as Eric Harris (right). Carol Rosegg
Based on Columbine
Shapiro is certainly not the first to draw on Columbine for art, or to attract criticism for doing so. Many others have based films, books, and even a video game on the event in Colorado, which while not the first school shooting, remains etched in the nation’s collective memory for the scale of destruction Harris and Klebold wrought.
The long list of previous films related to Columbine includes Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine; the play-turned-movie Bang Bang You’re Dead; the film Elephant; and a parody movie titled Duck! The Carbine High Massacre. A video game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG!sparked outrage after it was released on April 20, 2005, exactly six years after the shootings.
Another play, columbinus, written by P.J. Paparelli and Stephen Karam for The United States Theater Project, premiered in 2005. Unlike The Erlkings, columbinus—which is a mixture of fact and fiction—focuses on the victims as well. In the rampage scene in columbinus, Harris and Klebold are turned away from the audience. “We didn’t want it to be about them,” Paparelli told the Boston Globe last fall before a 10-show run opened in Boston.
In The Erklings, Shapiro consciously decided to leave out the actual shootings.
“That’s the part we know,” says Ali, the show’s director. “The part we don’t know is what happened the year before.”
Salli Garrigan was a junior at Columbine High School when Harris and Klebold opened fire. She was in the soundproof choir room when she and her classmates saw other students running outside through the windows. She managed to make it through the auditorium as the fire alarm rang and the sound of ricocheting bullets reached her ears from another part of the school. In the main hall, glass from the doors shattered in front of her before a teacher pointed her toward another route to safety.
Garrigan, who worked in theater in New York before recently moving to Washington, D.C., says on the fence about the idea of The Erlkings. She found out about the play when she saw an audition notice.
“It looks like the playwright was really touched by the Columbine shootings and wanted to write directly about it,” Garrigan tells Newsweek. “[But] since it’s from the eye of both Eric and Dylan, I feel like the play might enhance the problem even more.”
Her ambivalence, she says, is uncommon among those with a personal connection to Columbine. “There is a lot of uproar in the Columbine community,” Garrigan says, adding that “sometimes art can be therapy.”
Even Sanders concedes that theater is “a fantastic medium for people to understand and feel the emotions around [Columbine].” “I respect what [the playwright] is doing,” she says. “I just don’t respect how he’s going about it.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris with Reynaldo Piniella (camera) and Matthew Bretschneider in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg
According to Langman, most adolescents who are en route to committing a middle- or high-school shooting leave warning signs, which he refers to as “leakage.” A prospective gunman might “leak” his intentions by making direct threats, telling a friend to stay away on a certain day, or with other hints.
“It’s a matter of the people who hear or see them knowing they’re warning signs and knowing what to do about them,” Langman tells Newsweek. Langman runs training sessions for professionals in education and law enforcement on recognizing and handling warning signs.
Ultimately, Shapiro says, that’s the goal of the play as well.
“What we would like an audience to come away with is that these are preventable,” he says. “And it’s so much more powerful because of who said it, especially as he was plotting it,” referring to Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay, which closes the play.
The Erlkings—named for German poem Die Erlkönige, whiich Harris once made a note to himself to memorize—eschews a linear chronology for a more fluid structure. Toward the end of the first act, after Harris and Klebold’s classmates have lobbed cafeteria food and squeezed ketchup all over them, Harris once again drifts outside of the action to recite the note he would one day leave for the police.
“Don’t blame my family. They didn’t know. It’s not their fault. They brought me up just fucking fine,” he reads, telling police not to blame the school or the stores that sold him ammunition. “Just because we went on a killing spree doesn’t mean everyone else will.”
Given that the school shooting trend has become a common occurrence, this play is even more relevant than Columbinus. A bold move focusing on the shooters inner world which is of key importance in regards to the mental heal issues that are vaguely talked about each time a shooting occurs but then never seem to get addressed since we’re too busy vilifying the shooters and brushing, oopsy!, yet another one under the carpet.
“He says he pursued the play because “we will never prevent another Columbine by distancing ourselves from those who would perpetrate such an act and by refusing, out of fear, to understand them.”
^This.
I’ve never understood the logic behind the “Never say their names, never show their picture, never talk about them, never study them, never try to understand them, never try to figure out why they did it, never see them as human beings.” crowd; they might as well be saying “I don’t want to understand them even if it would help prevent shootings and save lives.”
Imagine if we treated preventable medical conditions the way we did shootings; waiting until you had a heart attack before giving you medical attention, and then only with a defibrillator rather than examining/studying/discussing the underlying issues/causes of the problem.
Also, the argument that talking about shooters or showing their pictures or saying their names is what’s going to make somebody decide to throw away their entire life and future, assemble an arsenal of killing utensils, and murder, maim and destroy as many other people as humanly possible is beyond ridiculous, and to me, says a lot about how resistant people are to trying to understand shooters and their motives.
It’s always said that people who want to commit shootings are going to do whatever it takes, that they are motivated and determined, that no amount of gun laws can stop them, but at the same time, they’re apparently so gullible and easily influenced that their motivation to overcome all these monumental obstacles and sacrifice their lives and the lives of others is because they saw James Holmes’ mugshot on CNN and want 5 minutes of “”“fame”“”?
We treat shooters like mysterious boogeymen; we say “If only he hadn’t played [insert violent video game] and listened to [insert “dark”, “subversive” music group] this never would have happened!”, and view them as inhuman, un-relatable, alien, monsters whose motives are incomprehensible. The thing is, their motives CAN be understood, if their writings were analyzed and discussed, if people were actually invested in truly understanding why they did it, they could find out, or at least come close. But a lot of people don’t actually want to understand what motivates shooters, they’re invested in their ignorance and will fight to maintain the mysterious ‘boogeymen’ illusion, as it creates an information vacuum where any postulated BS is considered equally plausible. Notice how many people still say Eric and Dylan went around asking everyone if they believe in god before shooting them, that Cassie said “yes” and Rachel said “You know I do”, despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. These people don’t want the truth, they don’t want themselves or anyone else to actually know E+D’s real motives, they get to affirm their confirmation bias, skew how the shooting was reported, manipulate and police the grieving process, wallow in self pity, and cast themselves as targeted, oppressed and righteous victims and wring out those lies tightly for years on end to get every last drop of precious BS false victimhood to spread propaganda and attract new recruits.
When the shooters are not discussed/analyzed and we don’t try to understand their motives, it makes it so anyone can put forth some pet BS explanation, and in this information vacuum, this BS is elevated in importance. People can suggest that the shooter did it because; “prayer isn’t taught in school”, “gay people can get married”, “vaccines”, “OBAMA!!11!” or any number of BS reasons that wouldn’t stick as well as they do if the truth was actually valued. (Note: if these BS postulations don’t stick and aren’t widely adopted, the next step is to throw ones hands up and flip the monopoly board over and cry “CONSPIRUHCY!!!” [It’s invariably attributed to communists or Jewish people.])
Anyway, back to my first point; *we need to recognize that shooters don’t just “snap” one day and go on a killing rampage for no reason, *that understanding shooters and their motives can help us prevent shootings, *that analyzing and discussing shooters/motives does not mean an endorsement of mass murder or glorification of murderers and that talking about shooters does not cause people to snap. Shootings can be prevented before they happen and that’s where we should focus our energy rather than just waiting until bullets start flying and trying to minimize the damage. Perhaps most important is that we need to recognize that the person who is most likely to, and most capable of preventing a shooting is the person contemplating one.
Well spoken additional commentary from c0atimundi tagged on to mine. Truth^^. So, reblogging this again..
Dylan with his Reservoir Dogs “Serial Killer” T-shirt. This 1992 Quentin Tarantino movie was highly influential for Eric and Dylan.
A better version of the image of Harvey Keitel (“Mr. White”) and Michael Madsen (“Mr. Blonde”) from the front of the shirt. This is a composite of these two…
“On three,” one of the boys says. His voice reeks of determination. The bright blond spikes of his hair stand out against a long coat, pants, and heavy-duty boots, all of them black.
“I… I… Okay,” says his partner, distraught under his own black garb.
Above them, a constellation of illuminated backpacks dangles from the ceiling, hanging over cafeteria tables ensconced in shadows.
“Eric Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay,” the first reads, drifting away from the scene to recall an assignment, which along with journal entries and poems the two have returned to throughout the play, moving nimbly between reality and introspection. “More and more we hear of shooting sprees and rampages on the news,” he says. “Almost any school shooting can be prevented in some way or another, we just have to spend the necessary time and money to figure out how.”
“What’d you get on it?”
“A 92.”
Moments later the shooters begin counting. The room goes dark. The audience knows what happened next.
The Erlkings, a play written by Nathaniel Sam Shapiro, depicts onstage the infamous shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who on April 20, 1999, killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others at Columbine High School before committing suicide. Theirs was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.
The off-Broadway play, directed by Saheem Ali, is based on an FBI report—a nearly 1,000-page compendium of the boys’ own writings and other evidence—as well as additional sources, like the many home videos Harris and Klebold made. It opens Sunday at the Beckett Theatre after a week of preview performances, with Em Grosland and James Scully in the leading roles.
In his playwright’s statement, Shapiro says he began researching Columbine after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and calls Columbine a “watershed moment” for those, like him, who were students in American schools at the time.
“The way we talked about Adam [Lanza] took me back to Eric and Dylan: these were ‘monsters’ and ‘no one could understand how they could do something like this,’” Shapiro writes. He says he pursued the play because “we will never prevent another Columbine by distancing ourselves from those who would perpetrate such an act and by refusing, out of fear, to understand them.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris, preparing pipe bombs in The Erlkings.
Carol Rosegg
Criticism from Columbine families
When Coni Sanders first caught wind of the project from a segment on the radio, she says she was shocked.
“He’s granting the wishes of these two boys who murdered my family,” says Sanders, whose father, William “Dave” Sanders, was a business teacher and coach at the school, the only staff member killed in the shootings. “I truly feel that he should have omitted the killers’ names.” Sanders published a strongly-worded op-ed about the play in the New York Post in early November that grew out of a post she had written on Facebook.
One of Harris and Klebold’s objectives was to be remembered forever, she says, and shooters after them have followed suit in an attempt to gain fame and notoriety. So putting Harris and Klebold onstage as Shapiro has, Sanders says, is not only “giving them exactly what they wanted,” but could also glorify their actions and encourage others to do the same. In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, she says, “the boy that killed their families idolized the boys that killed my family.”
After Columbine, Sanders became a forensic therapist, working with felons convicted of violent crimes and the mentally ill, “to better understand how Dylan and Eric got to where they are.” “I don’t see Eric and Dylan as monsters,” she says. “I see them as two boys who were broken.”
Shapiro insists that his play is meant to educate and prompt discussion rather than to glorify, and that the real-world scenario will help audiences connect to the issue.
“I don’t think Eric and Dylan would be so proud to see this play because it shows their humiliation, it shows their vulnerability,” he says, adding that the play highlights how Columbine is a more complex story than people would like to admit.
Peter Langman, a psychologist and scholar whose research focuses on school shooters, tells Newsweek: “My concern is that it might portray Harris and Klebold somehow as disaffected contemporary youth rather than portraying them as extreme psychological outliers.” While Klebold was slipping deep into a severe depression and exhibiting signs of schizotypal personality disorder, Langman says, Harris “was a very disturbed person, a psychopath.
“This is someone who admired Hitler and the Nazis. This is someone who had fantasies of raping girls he knew. This is someone who fantasized about mutilating human bodies and enjoying it. So he was not an ordinary kid, he was not just an innocent victim of the students who teased him.” Langman, who wrote the book Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, says “Eric Harris no more represents his generation than Charles Manson represented his.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold (left) and Em Grosland as Eric Harris (right).
Carol Rosegg
Based on Columbine
Shapiro is certainly not the first to draw on Columbine for art, or to attract criticism for doing so. Many others have based films, books, and even a video game on the event in Colorado, which while not the first school shooting, remains etched in the nation’s collective memory for the scale of destruction Harris and Klebold wrought.
The long list of previous films related to Columbine includes Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine; the play-turned-movie Bang Bang You’re Dead; the film Elephant; and a parody movie titled Duck! The Carbine High Massacre. A video game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG!sparked outrage after it was released on April 20, 2005, exactly six years after the shootings.
Another play, columbinus, written by P.J. Paparelli and Stephen Karam for The United States Theater Project, premiered in 2005. Unlike The Erlkings, columbinus—which is a mixture of fact and fiction—focuses on the victims as well. In the rampage scene in columbinus, Harris and Klebold are turned away from the audience. “We didn’t want it to be about them,” Paparelli told the Boston Globe last fall before a 10-show run opened in Boston.
In The Erklings, Shapiro consciously decided to leave out the actual shootings.
“That’s the part we know,” says Ali, the show’s director. “The part we don’t know is what happened the year before.”
Salli Garrigan was a junior at Columbine High School when Harris and Klebold opened fire. She was in the soundproof choir room when she and her classmates saw other students running outside through the windows. She managed to make it through the auditorium as the fire alarm rang and the sound of ricocheting bullets reached her ears from another part of the school. In the main hall, glass from the doors shattered in front of her before a teacher pointed her toward another route to safety.
Garrigan, who worked in theater in New York before recently moving to Washington, D.C., says on the fence about the idea of The Erlkings. She found out about the play when she saw an audition notice.
“It looks like the playwright was really touched by the Columbine shootings and wanted to write directly about it,” Garrigan tells Newsweek. “[But] since it’s from the eye of both Eric and Dylan, I feel like the play might enhance the problem even more.”
Her ambivalence, she says, is uncommon among those with a personal connection to Columbine. “There is a lot of uproar in the Columbine community,” Garrigan says, adding that “sometimes art can be therapy.”
Even Sanders concedes that theater is “a fantastic medium for people to understand and feel the emotions around [Columbine].” “I respect what [the playwright] is doing,” she says. “I just don’t respect how he’s going about it.”
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris with
Reynaldo Piniella (camera) and Matthew Bretschneider in The Erlkings.
Carol Rosegg
According to Langman, most adolescents who are en route to committing a middle- or high-school shooting leave warning signs, which he refers to as “leakage.” A prospective gunman might “leak” his intentions by making direct threats, telling a friend to stay away on a certain day, or with other hints.
“It’s a matter of the people who hear or see them knowing they’re warning signs and knowing what to do about them,” Langman tells Newsweek. Langman runs training sessions for professionals in education and law enforcement on recognizing and handling warning signs.
Ultimately, Shapiro says, that’s the goal of the play as well.
“What we would like an audience to come away with is that these are preventable,” he says. “And it’s so much more powerful because of who said it, especially as he was plotting it,” referring to Harris’s ‘Guns in School’ essay, which closes the play.
The Erlkings—named for German poem Die Erlkönige, whiich Harris once made a note to himself to memorize—eschews a linear chronology for a more fluid structure. Toward the end of the first act, after Harris and Klebold’s classmates have lobbed cafeteria food and squeezed ketchup all over them, Harris once again drifts outside of the action to recite the note he would one day leave for the police.
“Don’t blame my family. They didn’t know. It’s not their fault. They brought me up just fucking fine,” he reads, telling police not to blame the school or the stores that sold him ammunition. “Just because we went on a killing spree doesn’t mean everyone else will.”
Given that the school shooting trend has become a common occurence, this play is even more relevant than Columbinus. A bold move focusing on the shooters inner world which is of key importance in regards to the mental heal issues that are vaguely talked about each time a shooting occurs but then never seem to get addressed since we’re too busy vilifying the shooters and brushing, oopsy!, yet another one under the carpet.
Well, to preface, Dylan was automatically determined a social misfit in general at Columbine but no where else was his ‘loser’ reputation more intensely amplified than that of gym class. P.E. is a class that expects and assumes social collaboration and social competitiveness in an active way. Dylan felt excruciatingly excluded and ostracized. You can just imagine skinny, gangly, long-limbed Dylan in his mandatory CHS gym uniform of shorts and a muscle or t-shirt and there is an instantaneous sense of this poor guy standing out like a sore thumb as the ‘tallest in the class’, automatically made to feel stripped visibly bare simply by his sheer physicality – yet internally, shy, awkward and introverted, and wishing he could blend into the wall and disappear. The impulse to ditch or be really super late for class must have been tempting. Peers in the class referred to him as “stretch” or the “jolly green giant”. The gym teacher made Dylan do bear crawl exercises for being late to class constantly. Can anyone blame him for stalling on his way to a much detested class which made him anxious and on guard? Somehow being late was worth the public peer humiliation of bear crawls in a twisted, defiant sort of way.
Dylan’s diversion file report shows an ongoing account of the counselor noting his dropped grade in gym and that he’d better stop making “victim” excuses with the tardies to remedy the situation – or else. Like many of us that loathed the infamous gym class, I think it was pretty obvious that Dylan automatically assumed a form of ‘survival mode’ upon finally showed up for the class. He would brace himself and don a thick armor of ‘sneer’ and folded arms as his best posturing defense. Pretending not to hear them talk about him. It also sounds to me that he didn’t even have so much as one friend in this class. (Thank goodness morning bowling with friends was a P.E. option in senior year!) Peers referred to him by those ‘freak show’ like names, and you can bet he was acutely aware of it – though on the surface, he pretended indifference. Dylan internalized all of it with a bitter attitude and acted out his aggressions when/where the opportunity arose.
So, given all of that: it’s easy to see how he took a retaliating, justified posturing during competitive games – slamming people with a contemptuous expression during the no-rules dodge ball game or tackled people, heck, why not girls?, when they were playing tag team football, even ‘cheating’.Though we’re not entirely certain what she means by his supposed blatant cheating. Dylan didn’t have the nerve, or the physique, to physically go after the jocks and tackle them without likely getting ganged up on. Instead, he passive-aggressively took out his pent up frustration on those who he sensed were easiest, vulnerable targets – girls. Dylan occasionally seized the opportunity to act out and push a few girls in line, to tackle girls during games and harass them by calling them “bitch” when they talked back to him. I speculate that he wasn’t just seeking out random girls either but especially attempting to victimize the snooty, vapid girls – those he felt had popular status levels in their associations with jocks. Anything remotely associated to a jock just got his hackles up. Tara Zobjeck is probably a prime example of that type. When her boyfriend, who is likely a jock, confronted Dylan, he backed off immediately. Of course, we don’t know for certain that Dylan only singled out girls associated with jocks but I think it’s a good bet even though it’s a speculation on my part So, Dylan walked into that class daily believing that the class, as a whole, rejected him. He was by himself most of the time, he was habitually late to class, he barely squeaked by in most of the sports and was seen as inept and uncoordinated. From Dyl’s POV, he was certain the entire class was ‘the enemy’ against him from the start and so he probably felt the need to ‘defend himself’ against them whenever, wherever and however he could, armed with his bitter contempt and a massive chip-on-his-shoulder.
Dylan was vastly different outside of gym class. Friends describe Dylan outside of gym as as‘gentle’, ‘happy’,‘laid back’ and ‘nice’ – but here, in gym class, Dylan discovered a bullying streak with himself and had discovered a pastime outlet for his frustration by exploiting a few girls when the perfect opportunity arose. They’d be sorry for wasting his hour in a worthless class. Of course, I am in no way trying to minimize his bad behavior. Bullying sucks period. Feeling so desperate and powerless in class that you feel you’re only capable of victimizing girls is..sad. That said, I’m simply attempting to explore the full snapshot and potential psychological mentality that led to Dylan’s normally uncharacteristic passive-aggressive style of acting out. 🙂
On a deeper level, I think Dylan took his aggression out on girls in gym class because, in his mind, he felt that women didn’t recognize him as attractively worthy enough and he believed to his core that he could never have women because women would never want him. So, there was this contemptuous, bitter, self loathing posturing about him. In a class where it’s all about the competition, Dylan’s own form of competitive expressionwas to rage against the entire class as a collective group against him that rejected him for his low-on-the-totem-pole social status. Based on gym class witnesses, Dylan was automatically rejected as inadequate in regards to the male competitive sports stuff. Since, he was painfully conscious of that fact that he performed more visibly, physically uncoordinated that he normally would, if he were playing soccer or baseball among friends he knew, people that liked him. Plus, I think in gym, Dylan just went out of his way to under perform as much as possible; he slacked off with defiant indignation. Why give it your best shot when you feel no one likes you by default?
As if that wasn’t painful enough to endure for the hour, there was also, another sort of ‘competition’ that he innately knew he was out-of-league in regards to: that would be the undercurrent of female-to-male attractional potential within the class. The threat of that and his failing in it, made him jealous of others i.e. jocks, And of course, it’s pretty apparent to dudes that girls are wearing the bare minimum with the gym uniform of shorts and a t-shirt revealing bare legs and jiggling bits. 😉 It’s that usual, unavoidable awkward/distraction thing about co-ed gym where everyone is wearing the socialistic ‘cookie cutter’ uniform that despite looking dull manages to show enough ‘bare’ to be..noticable – and to begin with, teens are at odds with involuntarily displaying more of their bodies than they’d like to their peers. Gym class is judgment and distraction personified. Even Eric mentions how he couldn’t help but notice the girls in gym and how he’d fantasized about having them by force.
Dylan’s conduct in gym class was invariably a potent explosive cocktail of anger, resentment. self-loathing (“nobody accepting me even though I want to be accepted, me doing badly and being intimidated in any and all sports, me looking weird and acting shy — BIG problem.”) plus that physical and metaphorical frustration over girls. Women were untouchable and off limits to him, so he in return, treats them roughly, spitefully. I don’t even think Dylan even consciously sets out to bully girls in gym class; instead, it’s more of an unconscious, reactive thing he just devolves into doing it out of a combination of suppressed rage and self-perceived sexual unattractiveness. There must have been a smug adrenaline rush after exerting his body physically over girls in class – with a shove or a push, relishing in his harassment of some stuck up, shallow, designer clothes wearing ‘bitch’ was like a small victory to him. The she on the receiving end of his slight, represented something that was too good for him and so why not make a point of pissing off her and a few others when they got in his way – then they’d know he was not just some loser freak-geek that nobody in the class liked – but someone to be reckoned with. That sneerish vibe of ’girls: stay away from me if you know what’s good for you.’
From witness testimony, it sounds as though he also instigated on occasion and tackled girls during flag football. Why go after the guy opponents when you can tackle a few girls with some unexpected, hard body contact? Like most teen dudes, Dylan didn’t process his aggressive, suppressed sexual impulses – he just did annoying in-your-face shit to piss girls off. Instead of it being the usual ‘boy picks on girls because he likes them’ it was more like a Dylan picking on girls because he hates them because he’s not entitled to like them. Bullying has a sense of power about it; at its very fundamental level, it simply satisfying and boosts self confidence to exert ones will over others, putting the instigator in charge and control – end of story. And to answer the question, yes, I do see Dylan’s behavior in gym class as potentially connected to that hidden, sexually kinky side of himself, his ‘bondage-extreme liking’. In his journal, Dylan seems conflicted and chagrinned about that side of him self that gravitated towards fetish and bondage porn. His ‘urge and purge’ mentality translates to an obvious outlet for his suppressed frustrations, his assumed permanent inadequacy with the opposite sex – essentially, his lack of control over females. So, roughing up girls in gym class out of a blurred, confused ‘turned-on’ mix of pent up aggression and unconsciously repressed sexual frustration over girls, yes, definitely. Do I think he got a kick out of roughing girls up in gym? Yes.
This, of course, doesn’t mean we should make the assumption that this automatically makes Dylan sexually dominant in all of his 17 years. 😉 What it does mean is that Dylan is generally shy, quiet and introverted and he’s used to automatically suppressing the more aggressive, ‘in appropriate’ or negative aspects of himself and so these parts of himself spill out in other ways, including his personal taste in porn. He discovered opportune moments in the much loathed gym class where he could act out his aggressions physically, and as a bonus, with girls (!) and he could relish asserting his authority, feel empowered and in charged for once. Mm..a bit like when normally reticent Dylan suddenly exudes an air of smugness while wearing his trench in a restaurant with mom and doesn’t stop when she asks him to take the coat off because it’s scaring people. His occasional inappropriately abusive contact with girls in gym provides him an opportunity to exorcise control over girls when he normally feels he has none, and so this connects and relates to his attraction to his ‘extreme liking’ of certain bondage/fetish porn and related fantasies thereof.
Michelle Hartsough’s accusation that Dylan hit her at Blackjack pizza, seems to be the only location, other than gym class, where Dylan was reported to have acted out physically aggressive manner with girl. I think the fact that he chooses to act out aggressive in Gym class is an integral component. Overall, Gym class is a rampant place for bullying, girls and dudes are in close proximity in the minimal gym uniforms. Plus, it’s an environment where engaging actively in sports gives plenty of opportune instances to have some manner of accidental or intentional physical contact. Dylan could minimize his instigated physical contact under the veiled guise of ‘just engaging in gym class activities’. He could loath the class as a whole for automatically rejecting him and play ‘kick the dog’, asserting his dominance over vulnerable targets – girls – because he already assumed they were against him by default. Then when some girls called him out on his shit, he could feel justified in calling them bitch. Dylan set up a self-sabotaging, self fulfilling prophecy for himself – a viscious cycle of: class rejects him as a freak; he rebukes the class and acts out passive-aggressively; they, in turn now, really dislike him; repeat. But not everyone disliked Dylan in gym class, not every girl outright rejected him, unfortunately, unbeknownst to him too. Some, one?, like Sara Schweitzberger, could see the bigger, sadder picture beyond the political pecking order and understood the essential core of Dylan’s struggle and misery in gym class.
Nicole Ziccardi:Had gym with Klebold, she said that he would play dodge ball in the class and that he played hard and always had a sneer on his face that seemed to her to be hateful look. Several people in the class referred him as “The jolly Green Giant”.
Josh Chavez: Stretch:Everybody made fun of Dylan in class. They even called him “stretch” because he was so tall. He said Dylan was uncoordinated and wasn’t very good at sports.
Reddit:planetanimals:What I remember about Klebold. He was awkward looking, kind of unnattractive I guess. I remember the teacher making him do bear crawls for being late to class constantly. We played this no rules dodge ball game. It was just every man for himself, with like 50 or 60 kids. Him and this really scrawny kid were last and the scrawny kid beat him. for some reason i won’t forget that., kind of unnattractive I guess.
Sara Schweitzberger: To Love The Unloved Some of the kids would tease him because of his height as he was the tallest person in his class. She continued to say that Klebold just ignored them. Sara said it was obvious he felt socially ostracized. “He really felt unloved,” she said. He wasn’t so bad. He was lonely. I just wish I could give him a hug and tell him that I care.
Anyway.. that was rather long-winded. My apologies for the uber lengthy late-night Dyl thesis. 😉
This is a piece I did for a tumblr friend of mine, as we got into talking about the idea of what if Dylan at 16 to 17 meets his 33 year old sef and they are both unaware that they are both one in the same. This spiraled into an entire kik conversation of what they’d say to one another as though they were talking to strangers. Hope you like it C!
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~*Dylan’s POV*~
Fuck this! I’m just going to skip the rest of the day. Fucking Jocks. I can’t ever have one day at this fucking place where I can just be left alone. I didn’t even think I’d get a good grade on that essay. I just left it until the day before to write. So I didn’t expect the A I got on it. Huh.
But of course, because I have to live out this meaningless existence in life, the asshole behind me saw the grade.
You can read my answer on Devon and Dylan here. Nope. Dylan wasn’t into Devon that way. However, Devon claimed Eric had a crush on her at one point. I don’t know if that was just her assumption or if Eric really did have a fleeting thing for her since he tended to have quite a few favorite flavors of the week. If he did, it was early on at CHS, and couldn’t have lasted very long since Zach and Devon got together in ‘97.
1.5 – 2 years max. I think when the announcement was made on September 23rd, Sue already had quite a bit compiled from over several years of soul searching by way of cathartic journaling and using other people’s perspectives as sounding boards. She is a naturally gifted, lyrical writer too (like mother, like son). I think the concerted work will be in the editing and condensing. She will have a lot to offer. Sending those positive vibes Sue’s way so her whole publishing experience/process will be effortless..which means a lightening-fast launch date for us! 😉
Dylan saw Robyn as a friend, a ‘very cool friend’ that just so happens to not be a dude (for once). He liked that she appreciated his sense of humor and that he could just relax and feel at ease – just hang out and goof off. I think Robyn saw Dylan as a friend but a very good friend. I get that she saw him as a really gentle, nice guy underneath the quiet exterior. It’s like, ‘OH, you people have no clue what a crack up he actually is when you actually get to know him.’ Warm hearted and does stuff for you.
Some of their other friends viewed Robyn as crushing on Dylan. She gave off that ‘I reeeally, reeeally like my “friend”’ vibe. While Robyn may have been kinda-sorta-yeah attracted to Dylan, she may not have even fully acknowledged her being sweet on him in a conscious sort of way. She went out of the way to very actively initiate get-togethers with him. She called Dylan nightly at least three times a week (imagine those calls..lol), went to Blackjack to make plans for the weekend. She encouraged and cultivated a decent girl friendship experience for him. Robyn also seemed to understand that Dylan was not interested in anything beyond friendship and that he wasn’t quite ready yet because he was a bit socially introverted and so she simply respected his boundaries. Good christian girl, top student, respectful person. Robyn was content to have a good time with Dyl and enjoyed goofing off, having ‘inside jokes’ together and doing ‘stuph’ like going bowling, renting movies, studying together (she usually helped bring him up to speed with his Calculus, though he was quite capable of it, he simply wasn’t applying himself but his parents thought he was helping her with the homework.) I think she understood that because Dylan wasn’t giving her any clear signals that he might like anything more than just pals, she was content to keep it at the platonic level they were at instead of pushing for more and risking things becoming awkwardly changed for good. What they had was perfect and fun – why ruin a good thing?
Robyn was experienced with guys and dating and her ex boyfriend had been in the TCM. If Dylan had made it known in any remote way that he was interested, I am sure Robyn would have encouraged him and returned his affections. She was content to be friends, but hey, with time, maybe it could become something more? Robyn met an older dude that was in the marines (I believe?) that she was amorously interested in him. When she wrote this guy around Prom time, she claimed that if he were not out on duty, she would have gone with this him as first choice. Robyn told him about her buddy Dylan and how they were good friends but that he’d never once been to a dance before and also that she had asked him because they have such a good time together. Both Eric and Dylan liked Robyn probably because she was all around ‘nice’, inclusive and non judgmental to them so they were with her. She was friends with the TCM and also non TCM. To make friends, you have to be one. Robyn just assumed friendship with the boys. She even bought Eric a belated birthday present, a t-shirt, and meant to track him down at school and give it to him..on 4/20.
I love how Dylan is drinking a Dr Pepper in this picture. (Suck it down, Dylan! Wait, that sounds bad…) This must have been circa 1988-1989, since the caption reads, “Dylan Klebold (left) and Brooks Brown, age eight, attend a meeting of the Cub Scouts.” (From Brooks’s book No Easy Answers.)
-ALL LAMERZ DIE! DK kicked off AOL – Robyn Anderson [10,631]
Dylan, ’90s computer geek that he was, disdainfully dabbled in amateur hacking using AoHella tool that greatly simplified ‘cracking’ AOL.
Dylan didn’t pay for an AOL account because AoHell had a fake account generator which would generate a new, fully functional AOL account for the user that lasted for about a month. This generator worked by exploiting the algorithm used by credit card companies known as the Luhn algorithm to dynamically generate apparently legitimate credit card numbers. The account would not be disabled until AOL first billed it (and discovered that the credit card was invalid). The generator could also generate fake addresses and phone numbers, resembling on their surface legitimate personal information. Amongst it’s arsenal of bad-ass hacking tools 😉 was Phishingwhich enabled hackers to steal passwords and credit card information through automated social engineering. The program would barrage random AOL users with instant messages like:
“Hi, this is AOL Customer Service. We’re running a security check and need to verify your account. Please enter your username and password to continue.”
A Punter (IM-Bomber) which would send an Instant Message containing HTML code to another user that would sign them off. Dylan explained to a student that he belonged to a group called PuNtErS & pRoGs. His favorite personally designed shirt was dark green with white lettering that read, AOL: WheRe KewLz HaXORz ArE – Translation: AOL: Where Cool Hackers Are. Explanation: It’s a joke because it’s easy to hack on AOL
A flooding script that would flood a chat room with ASCII art of an offensive nature, such as the finger or a toilet. An ‘artificial intelligence bot’, which had the ability to automatically respond to a message in a chatroom upon identification of keywords. (For example, a ‘profane language’ autoresponse was built into the program), and a Steve Case cloak, which allowed users to pose as AOL founder Steve Case in chat rooms.
Still need a reason why Dyl got kicked off AOL ? 😉
Hmm.. I would wager that Dyl would snicker that wicked little laugh of his (you know the one?) while flooding chat rooms with profanity and then smirked omnipotently, as he punted enough unsuspecting users off the system. After enough times of exercising those effortless AoL HaXoR skills of his, AOL punted him off a few times around for ToS abuse before permanently kicking his ass from that mainstream newbie-land of an ‘online community’. No great loss to him, just practice and play. Exploit and then move on to other more challenging things.
When Dyl told Robyn he got kicked off AOL, that was a proud boast to be sure. lol
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Adding a little addendum to this post on 12.9.17:
Various HaXoR progs Dylan messed around with: TOS (AOL Terms of Service)
AOBomer (v1 b3:) – ALL LAMERZ DIE!
Stormfront – TheENDisnear!
aka (StormFront’s TOSer: theENDisnear StormFront beta 4: second button 3 times then 3rd button twice, then hit the “i got this” button | TOSer: theENDisnear )
These AoL HaXor progs (programs) were found here and here. This Angelfire webpage is vintage 90s and probably the exact website Dylan went to have a bit of fun messing around on AoL with members with a variety of amateur progs to choose from.
http://stsim.com/mdc/hidpic Unfortunately, this site, whatever it was, no longer exists and even Wayback Machine provides very little clues if any.
Quirks: The idiosyncrasies of DBK
Triple Barred Cross Earring
Dylan’s left ear was pierced, and he usually wore a “triple cross” earring. A friend of Dylan’s in 2002 said that it was homemade, but it has also been heard that it was made in Shop class at school or that it was specially ordered from a company. He drew the triple cross numerous times, repeating the same design over and over in his writings and doodles.
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To Dylan, the triple barred cross symbolically represented the Ever-lasting Contrast – signifying the eternal battle of good and bad within himself, humanity and the world. The upright cross, the traditional christian style crucifix, representing the good, the pure, the light – adjoined to the inverted cross – representing the mirror opposite – the bad, the tainted, the dark. The union of polar opposites, the intersection of creative force and destructive force, positive and negative, joined as one. Dylan, himself, is represented as the large slashed bar that “cuts” across the middle of the two opposing crosses in constant internal conflict. The struggle of duality, of dark and light within himself, resonated deeply with Dylan.
I think Dylan was originally attracted by the two barred “Cross of Lorraine”. The symbol that was originally adopted by the Knights Templar and it’s form mirrors the teachings of Hermeticism and it’s occult axiom “As Above, So Below”. Marilyn Manson utilized the two barred symbol for his band post Columbine. I suspect that in the midst of a late night cutting session, Dylan discovered his own unique symbol from the original double barred cross. He cut a slash down the midsection of the double cross. You can see where he says “cut here” in his journal drawings and refers to the midsection as “me”. The symbol that Dylan arrived at on his own is actually known as a Salem’s Cross. I believe the earring was custom made to his exact specifications. It was the only earring he ever wore and religiously. It was so special to his being that he made sure to remove the earring, along with other personal items of significance, placing them in a small pile, before committing suicide.
”..my favorite contrasting symbol because it is so true & means so much.”
”..good things turn bad and bad things become good.”
Oh, the friendship between Dylan and Eric was good enough..in a bad sort of way. 😉 According to Dylan, he was ‘very good friends’ with Eric; Eric consider Dylan his ‘best friend’. Above and beyond that, you can think of it like the two were the best sort of business arrangement in a friendship because both of the two were committed to having revenge and getting even with the school. They talked about blowing up the school and they knew they both meant it unlike when they talked about it with other friends. They understood it was a one -way mission, ending with their deaths, whether that’d be suicide by cop or by their own hand, and they were vested in their secret plan. Zach joined in on the regular ‘hate school/hate the jocks’ jokes but he wasn’t genuinely dead serious in his hate anymore as he used to be with Dylan. Zach now had a girlfriend in his life and so life was looking at bit more optimistic than it had been. Dylan still resonated with Zach as a person and missed him very much – but he knew things had just..changed. they would never be on the same page anymore with their misery. Still, he shared personal, emotional stuff with Zach which was not his relationship style with Eric. Dylan felt stuck and frustrated and only Eric was there – consistently- to meet him at the same level and to provide a solution for that pain. As for Dylan’s ‘love’, she was an ideal he had held in his mind. He ultimately realized and resigned to the fact that the reality of ‘she’ would never come forward or reveal herself in this lifetime. The two would never confess/return feelings for one another – as he’d hoped and longed for in his imagination – it just wasn’t in the cards. His dream of going NBK with “The Girl” was just that, a dream. Yet, the thoughts of happiness about her carried him forward, propelled him to meet one last goal that meant a hell of a lot more than getting good grades or graduating on to college. He would realize the reality of Judgment and his death day with Eric, his very good friend who would be there with him in their suicide pact. Then beyond that, he and his love would be in wait of each other, their reward would be in finding one another on the other side. While Eric and Dylan may not have both equally considered one another ‘best friends’, they were ideal friends, in that perfect storm sort of way: right time, right conditions and with a common interest binding them together in one shared goal they both badly sought to accomplish.
I get the sense that Devon Adams was very sociably inclusive and generous in calling close associates of her’s “best friends”. Like Robyn Anderson, Devon seemed to work on extending a friendship and building trust with timid Dylan. The reward of doing so meant that both girls got to know the “real” Dylan Klebold. It’d take a bit of time to get Dyl to drop his guard but when he finally felt comfortable enough in doing so around those few girls that worked at it such as Devon and Robyn, he’d reveal that more chill, zany side of himself and also the loyalty. Dylan also became very close with Zach and he mentions in his journal that he considers Zach his best friend. Zach and Dylan are super close because they talk on the phone nightly and share their upsets and bond in depression. At some point in ‘97, Devon and Zach become a couple. For Zach, the intimacy with Devon allows him to go to her for counsel to help him with problems. The dynamic for Dylan becomes like ‘threes a crowd’. By Zach and Devon wanting to spend all their time together, Dylan fells betrayed and kicked out like he’s the third wheel. It is not hard to see Dylan grappling with this sudden turn of events in his journal. He recalls all the good times with Zach, all the fun things they did together for the first time. Instead of being angry at Zach for not being there for him, he directs his anger at Devon. Devon is the one that took his best friend away from him. He holds her responsible. In his struggle with feeling angry and abandoned by his best friend, he jokes in a bitterly, sarcastic way about Devon “..who I wouldn’t mind killing.” Did he mean this in the literally sense? I say, no. Was he ranting about Devon maliciously to blow off steam? Yes. The fact of the matter is, Dylan is fifteen and a half years old and has just started writing in his journal and he is years away from the Columbine attack. In my opinion, people say nasty stuff all the time in their journal. This is what journals are for, right? To express all the ugliness you’re feeling. Dylan’s idle consideration that he wouldn’t mind killing Devon is not some red flag clue that he’s serious about doing so or that he is showing sociopathic tendencies. I think to reach that conclusion is a bit of a stretch. Dylan was deeply hurt. His two good friends had found an even closer bond in each other and Dylan felt left in the dust. Dylan was also jealous that he couldn’t have the same sort of thing with a girl. Devon was the key that took his guy friend away, his emotional sounding board. He was angry and expressed that he’d metaphorically like to kill Devon for instigating change that made him feel all the more alone. Saying you want to kill someone in your personal journal is normal and natural. Who hasn’t done this at some point? Come clean, now people. 😉 It’s a way to to exorcise the pain and outrage. It’s cathartic. Nothing more. Also, Dylan remained friends with Devon the whole time he said these things in his journal about her. He was still her friend even though it was a struggle to get used to the new dynamics.
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris, preparing pipe bombs in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg
James Scully as Dylan Klebold (left) and Em Grosland as Eric Harris (right). Carol Rosegg
James Scully as Dylan Klebold and Em Grosland as Eric Harris with Reynaldo Piniella (camera) and Matthew Bretschneider in The Erlkings. Carol Rosegg
The Everlasting Contrast 