“If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask... with nothing beneath it?”
Self-image is an essential part of growing up hence this narrative largely set in a high school addresses the issue of identity. The majority of the students seek to join the popular clique in the school in order to escape ridicule, bullying, and alienation. One central character with this problem is Josie who ruins his relationship with Peter to be part of a popular group. It is not purely her fault since this response comes with the territory of avoiding being socially invisible. Similarly, Joey, Peter’s older brother, mocks and rejects him to maintain his social currency with his circles. The statement is an assessment of Josie’s mother, Alex, as she navigates the role of a mother and a judge in the public eye. Nonetheless, it reflects the issue of self-image that high schoolers are grappling with for social acceptance.
“When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself.”
The narrative opens with a tragedy that sets up the conflict as it goes back and forth to show the occurrences before and after. The protagonist is a victim of bullying that escalates with every passing day until he chooses to sadistically react. Though the reaction is a response to physical and emotional torment, it is a path that is self-destructive and hypocritical. Peter transforms into his victimizers by exerting violence rather than forgiving and taking the higher road in the matter. All it takes is nineteen minutes to seal his fate by taking the lives of ten people and in turn his own metaphorically. Coincidentally, Peter commits suicide out of his guilt which is a kind of poetic justice that aligns with the Chinese proverb.
“I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster.”
Peter’s trial is not straightforward because his defense team attributes his actions to the battered person syndrome. Thus, he is as much a victim as his victims according to the argument that the McAfees are presenting to the court. The statement is made by the professor of psychiatry to the people of Sterling trying to make sense of the tragedy that has befallen them. This same attitude is held by many since they view Peter as a monster with no sense of empathy or remorse. While it might be true at the moment of the shooting, Jordan insists it was a mental episode from post-traumatic stress disorder. In that, Peter was momentarily disconnected from reality thereby reacting out of character.
