Essay Questions

Who is Carnivore and what purpose does his brief appearance serve?

Carnivore is an inmate in a nearby cell in the jail holding prisoners in the time leading up to and during their trial. He is portrayed as pretty much the stereotype of a hardened criminal and that is the whole point of his being in the story. Despite fitting most people’s expectations of someone charged with raping and stabbing a woman, his reply to Peter’s query about why he did receive bail is to “Because they say I raped some waitress, and then stabbed her.” Carnivore refuses to openly admit to and take responsibility for his crimes just like Peter, though in different ways. Peter contemplates the previously unthinkable idea that maybe everyone in prison considers themselves innocent. What he really means, however, is that maybe everyone who commits a crime thinks of themselves not so much as innocent, but guilty with extenuating circumstances. In other words, everybody has their reasons, but not everyone shares the conviction that those reasons provide justification.

What commentary on the whole school shooting epidemic plaguing America is being made by the introduction into the narrative of Hide-N-Shriek?

Peter and his friend Derek both work together to create an absurdly violent and pointless video game called Hide-N-Shriek in which avatars representing nerdy students carry out bloody revenge against representatives of the more popular cliques who bully them. It is introduced into the narrative for its literal symbolism in which Peter’s revenge fantasies proceed along a clear linear path from existing simply inside his head to acting out virtually to finally taking place for real. This seems like an easy win for the prosecution because it clears away all doubts about Peter’s state of mind before the actual shooting.

The only problem is that the game has two creators attached and yet only one goes on to become a school shooter. This creates a logical disconnect that raises certain questions about the jump from violent media to personal accountability. Beneath the singular significance attached to Peter’s psychology, the introduction of Hide-N-Shriek becomes commentary on the massively funded attempts by the gun industry to shift the root cause of massive death in school shootings away from easy access to assault rifles and to the influence of video games, music, TV and movies.

Who is the invisible puppet master unwitting manipulating the strings of this marionette show that ultimately lead straight to self-destruction?

Let there be no doubt: Peter, the shooter, is the key villain in this story. But that does not mean that he is the only malevolent force guiding his actions. The murder of Josie’s boyfriend Matt might well have been an act that made the world a much better place for some people. The only problem is that nobody can know that for sure. And while Matt and the other students who openly humiliate and bully and taunt Peter to the point of breaking deserve a fractional amount of the blame for violence which occurs, it is still the inescapable truth that whoever pulls the trigger on a gun is the one actually responsible for what happens.

Nevertheless, if there is one character who can identified as a profoundly stupid secondary villain in the story, it is Courtney Ignatio. Peter’s finger pulled the trigger, true, but Courtney pulled the strings leading to that finger being on the trigger in the first place. Like Peter himself, Courtney is not the figure of a monster everyone should have identified as homicidally evil beforehand. The consequences of her actions turn out to be evil, but the intent of those actions were only evil in the sense of being absurdly self-centered, immature, and immune to the feelings of anyone who is not Courtney Ignatio.