Hide-N-Shriek
The violent video game that Peter helps to design—and the design that foreshadows his killing spree—is a rather complicated piece of symbolism. Initially, it may seem to be a simple symbol of foreshadowing that links Peter’s revenge fantasies to his real life acting out of vengeance upon his enemies. While it certainly is that, one must keep in mind that Peter is not the only mind contributing to its mindset. He is the only one who acts upon that mindset, however. Thus, the game also becomes a symbol of the failed attempt often made to link media violence as a greater cause of school shootings than woefully easy access to weapon designed for war to come into the hands of overly sensitive teenagers.
The Ambien Pills
Josie has a plastic bag filled with prescription strength sleep aid Ambien hidden beneath her bed in the event she suddenly decides to follow through on persistent suicidal thoughts. Josie is one of the most popular girls in school dating a jock who is one of the most popular guys in school. That Josie is never quite certain when her flirtatious thoughts of suicide may suddenly turn into a real desire to go through with the attempt symbolizes the dark side of high school popularity. As with everything else in life, what those who do not have and desperately want turns out to be not as comprehensively great as it seems to the insider who possesses it. In a larger sense, in other words, the suicide pills symbolize the duality of all existence; the necessity of a yin for every yang.
The Remington 721
While grounded and bored, Peter hears sounds in the basement and discovers his father cleaning his rifle. His father asks him if Peter wants to assist in the cleaning of the rifle which leads to a lecture on learning to respect guns which climaxes with the stunningly idiotic expression of belief that a gun is just a tool like a hammer that actually “doesn’t do anything unless you know how to pick it up and use it correctly.” Of course, as tragic news accounts remind us every so often, any two year old can pick up a gun, use it incorrectly, and make it do something absolutely horrific. The rifle symbolizes an irrefutable truth: guns don’t kill people, people with guns kill people.
Rice Krispies
Surrounded by the bloody carnage of his own making, the school shooter sits down in the cafeteria and pours himself a bowl of Rice Krispies and milk which he calmly eats before picking up his gun and heading out. To the prosecution, this one act is the central symbol of Peter’s lack of conscience and empathy for others. His defense argues that the very act itself is evidence that Peter is himself a victim of his own explosion of rage and fury. So, ultimately, the Rice Krispies becomes a symbol of neither point of view, but instead represents the balancing of the scales of justice in which seeming evident facts are almost always open to some level of contextual interpretation.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Peter is reading Oscar Wilde’s novel for English class. The plot revolves around a man who seems to maintain his youthful and innocent appearance for an impossibly long time. The secret to his longevity lies in a portrait hidden in his attic which takes on all the physical manifestations of the man’s actual life of decadence and malevolence. The awful, horribly disfigured portrait of Dorian is what we often expect the monsters around us to look like when the reality is that some of the worst humans ever have looked much more like the actual Dorian or Peter. The book comes to symbolize all those mass murders who prowled through school hallways armed to the teeth that look just as absurdly innocent as baby-faced Kyle Rittenhouse when he “broke down in tears” on the witness stand.
