The penultimate act of Kevin’s cruelty occurs in the first semester of Kevin’s sophomore year when he managed to remove a teacher from her position by fabricating a fictional story of how she sexually harassed him after classes. This creates a blinding sense of foreboding for the reader as the cruel “accidents” that Kevin always seemed to be involved in were often well planned and meticulously executed. Meanwhile, school shootings are occurring across the country at what seems like an alarmingly frequent interval but instead of being shocked by what is being done by the shooters Kevin rolls his eyes at the unoriginality and ineffectiveness of the shooters. And this suspicion of Kevin not engaging with the conversation for a positive effect is seen as he eventually cuts her off and tears her down in a cruel tirade, ending with his line: “maybe I’d rather have a big cow of a mother who at least didn’t think she was better than everybody else.” As the novel is written in retrospect the reader is unsure if the suspicions were immediate or after a nerve-wracking wait in the hospital her thoughts wandered.īefore this fateful event, Eva thought she had made progress with Kevin as they had an actual conversation about the general ugliness but from a reader’s view, it is seen not as a moment of bonding but the fueling the fire for Kevin’s attack. Cecilia is rushed to the hospital after pouring Liquid-Plumr down her eye, she survives but loses her eye. ![]() But one afternoon a terrible accident occurs and although Kevin attests, he is blameless, Eva suspects otherwise. To instill a sense of responsibility, Eva and Franklin decide to let Kevin babysit Cecilia. ![]() What Kevin did to his sister when he was just 14 was a major red flag. The effect of creating an opposite to Kevin highlights the oddness of Kevin’s behaviour and introduces the argument of nature over nurture. There are so many clues littered throughout this book to show that Kevin is not a stable child, “only eating the saltiest of foods”, repeating everything his parents said in “mocking nonsense syllables” but the worst of it was what he did to his younger sister Cecilia.Ĭecilia is depicted as the polar opposite of Kevin, she is sweet but not too smart and has an unsettling trust in Kevin, which unnerves Eva. This fear is confirmed as throughout the letters depicting Kevin’s childhood he is seen to “shriek with hatred” when he and Eva are left alone together, and even before that Kevin refused to suckle his mother. This creates an impending sense of fear and makes the reader believe that even before his birth Kevin is full of malice and lacking emotion. She is not excited, as often expected, but fearful. The lack of emotion involved in thisĬhoice is very harrowing for the reader ad could create a sense of forebodingįor the kind of child Kevin was going to be.Įventually, Eva becomes pregnant but as she puts it, she feels “strangely cold”. See that having “something to talk about” is not a justified reason to take the One-night Eva becomes terribly distraught over not knowing where her husband is and decides that she needs to conceive. ![]() They go back and forth until they agree that it will give them “something to talk about” a new challenge in their lives. She was thirty-seven at the time and while Franklin was desperate to have children, Eva was wistful at how much the parents changed. This contrast is very effective in showing the impossibility of remaining composed in situations such as is.Įva recalls the decision to have children was not easy. This outburst of emotion is rare for Eva because the tone of the early parts of the book is almost impassive and out of the body. This makes the reader feel just how much strain Kevin and his actions have put on her life and how his picking and berating finally forced her to snap and no longer be able to stay civil. ![]() This harsh response finally gives closure the Eva, however, because all throughout the novel she had debated whether she really had wanted Kevin. There is a very heavy sense of regret throughout the novel, seen in the response to Kevin’s question, “you never wanted to have me, did you?” which was “I thought I did”. As she is writing these letters, Eva is living alone and without much money and many of the letters are littered with flashbacks of a time when she was successful, happy, married, and childless. The focus of many of the earlier letters is on the judgment from other people, and how it appears to make her feel like a “fugitive”.
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