Intentional Irony or Not?
In his journal, Eric Harris goes off on a tangent after learning about the restrictions on buying guns mandated by the Brady Bill. The journal is considered a pretty clear indicator that Harris had already verged into psychopathy by this point which raises the question of whether his ironic overstated reaction to this knowledge is intention or not:
"Its [sic] not like I'm some psycho who would go on a shooting spree.”
1 Year, 8 Months and 13 Days Later
The cruelest irony associated with the Columbine massacre is that more than a year a half before the attack on the school by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the father of Brooks Brown—who had been threatened by Eric Harris—alerted the authorities to what he deemed to be extremely disturbing material on Eric’s personal website. Due to the man’s concern for the safety of his son, police complied with the man’s request that they not directly contact either Harris or Klebold. In addition the ironic possibility that had police investigated further, the massacre might possibly have been averted, the profound irony here is that by the day of the attack, Eric had come become friendly enough with Brown that Brooks was one of the few students Eric warned not to attend school that day.
Layers of Irony
“Who would do something like this? Robyn asked her girlfriends. Who would be this retarded?”
Robyn is stuck in car in the school parking lot with her friends after being told by police it is too late to back out. Her rhetorical question is loaded with irony for at least two reasons. One, Robyn was Dylan’s date to the prom, which took place just a few days previous. Even more ironic: Robyn had assisted (swearing later she had no idea what was going to happen) Eric and Dylan in purchasing weapons at a recent gun show.
Blind Faith
Sadly, there is even irony at work in the specific case of the cold-blooded murder of Cassie Bernall. Part of the mythology about Columbine that remains fully intact for most people is the story of Dylan Klebold approaching devout Christian Cassie and asking if she believed in God and, after she said yes, shooting her at point blank range. Other students who witnessed Cassie’s murder were forced with some reluctance and regret to debunk this story, but by then the myth of Cassie’s martyrdom had become so widely disseminated that it had grown stronger than the truth. Reverend Dave MacPherson, the youth pastor as Cassie’s church, cemented the irony of Cassie’s martyrdom being based on a myth with the admission that “The church is going to stick to the martyr story. You can say it didn't happen that way, but the church won't accept it." This admission is really just one thread of a much larger fabric of irony in which so much that is considered conventional wisdom about the Columbine Massacre is constructed upon information that varies wildly in the factual accuracy.
Dylan's Journal
One of the most succinct cases of irony in the book is the revelation of the contents of diary Dylan Klebold’s had been maintaining for so long that it ran to a length five times that of Eric’s.
“Love was the most common word in Dylan's journal.”
