Bullying Perspectives, Research Paper Example

“Nineteen Minutes” is less an account concerning a terrible occurrence than a shrewd deconstruction of youthful unfriendliness, of the devastating bullying effects, and the worrying consequences of benevolent neglect. Seventeen year-old Peter was a good kid. He hailed from a loving and caring home; Lacy, his mother, a generous and warm woman; his dad, a nice scientist. The whole family was still reeling from Joey’s death, just the previous year, but all of them were dealing with this in their personal ways. Joey was Peter’s brother.

On 20^th April 1999, at roughly 11.19 a.m., within the small, inhabited Littleton town, Colorado, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who were seniors in high school, acted out an all-out attack on Columbine High School at some point in a normal school day. The two boys made a plan to murder hundreds of their schoolmates. The two moved within the school where they shot and killed countless of their victims within the library. When the shooting ended at around 11.35 a.m., the two had executed twelve scholars, a teacher, and both killers were dead: in addition to twenty-one people, being injured (Bo?ckler 5).

However, the long and slow journey of Peter towards his frantic act started in the previous years, as early as when he was in kindergarten. On Peter’s very first day in school, he was labeled as being somehow different from others- smaller, inferior, less socially comfortable, and weaker. His lunchbox was thrown away through the school bus’ window, and that particular day and days later, was the beginning of an extensive reign of regular bullying that goes up to a tipping point eventually exploding. This explosion causes the shooting that takes the lives of ten people one teacher and nine students and injures many other people (Campbell 23).

All through the book, time is flashed back and forth linking events that took place prior to and after the occurrence. In the earlier period, the reader gets to learn that Josie and Peter were once very close friends. Peter was frequently being targeted for severe bullying while in school, and Josie repeatedly stuck up for Peter. As the friends got older, they gradually drifted apart from each other: Josie becoming part of the popular crowd to look after her personal interests, considering her association with Peter as an embarrassment.

Harris and Klebold were believed to be exceptional and intellectuals. However, the truth about the bullying cannot be hidden since it happened regularly within their years in high school. Since the two were close, other students point the finger at them for being homosexuals, and they were mocked. Settling of scores for bullying and long-drawn-out mental and physical violence by their schoolmates inflicts itself as one conceivable reason behind Harris and Klebold’s mass murder actions.

The tale presents Peter as being an outcast at his home as well because Peter believes that Joey, his elder brother is favored by their parents. His brother Joey is an athlete and a popular straight-A, if not smart student, but he considers it essential to mock Peter in order for him to protect his status. Joey even comes up with a story that Peter was an adopted son. In 2006, when Joey perishes through a car accident, Lacy and Lewis Houghton became too upset to focus on their surviving son Peter, leading to a larger rift between the parents and Peter (Picoult 16).

Journals, observations, and videos imply that Klebold had been considering committing suicide in the year 1997, and the two started thinking about a great mass murder as early on as April the year 1998. This is a whole year prior to the actual incident. By this time, they had gotten into some trouble. In January 1998, they had been taken into custody for breaking into a car. They agreed to get into a juvenile recreation program in April the same year. The two finished the program in eleven months proving to everyone that they were actually sorry for the break-in. On the other hand, for the duration of the whole program time, Klebold and Harris came up with plans for an across-the-board massacre at their educational institution. Therefore, the massacre was premeditated (Sanders and Phye 45).

In their firstyear in high school, Josie starts dating Matt, who was a famous jock leading his friends John Eberhard and Drew Girard in bullying Peter. Peter is often called by Matt “faggot” and “homo”, prompting Peter to start inquiring about his sexual orientation. The bullying intensifies the moment Matt starts dating Josie. This is because Matt is very possessive and wants to keep Josie away from any other boy. On one occurrence, Josie is approached by Peter after school and tries to talk to her. Peter is beaten up by Matt, leaving him humiliated in the front of their school. During this time, Peter escapes from the world of bullying and enters the video games world (Campbell 36).

The connection between bullying and violent behavior within schools has caught the increasing attention of the globe ever since the massacre at Columbine in 1999. Klebold and Harris were categorized as kids who were brilliant and had purportedly been bullying victims for a period of four years. One year afterward an examination by United States Secret Service officials of thirty-seven thought-out school shootings established that bullying, which a number of shooters depicted “in expressions that approached anguish,” played the key role within more than 2/3 of the assaults. Brooks Brown expanded on a similar supposition within his paperback on the mass murder; he noted down that educators regularly never took bullying head on when it came into view (Bo?ckler 10).

One month prior to the shooting, Peter discovers that he is in love with Josie, and he sends Josie an email articulating her how he adores her. Courtney Ignatio reads this email before Josie reads it and he tells Drew to forward the email to the whole school. Courtney then persuades Peter that Josie loves him. Peter requests Josie to meet him later over lunch, only to be publicly humiliated as his pants are pulled down by Matt and his genitals are exposed to a cafeteria filled with students. The psychotic break of Peter is prompted on that morning when the shooting took place, when he switches his computer on and by mistake opens the email he had written to Josie.

Educator’s indifferent response to bullying of scholar state of affairs has additionally been blamed for the Columbine shooting. Untimely narrations subsequent to the shootings hauled up that school supervisors and educators at Columbine knew that bullying was taking place and overlooked a bullying environment by the supposed jocks who actually bullied Klebold and Harris. The educators allowed an environment of fear and hatred to fester for the two students. Supposedly, homophobic comments were hurled at Klebold and Harris. A study carried out after the massacre demonstrated that scholars and parents put across that they were disgruntled with educators’ bullying responses (Sanders and Phye 189).

Picoult attempts to shed light on some attitudes that lead to bullying. Some are unintentional, like an unsuspecting slight seen as betrayal. Others are frighteningly purposeful. Josie, who as a little child was the best friend of Peter but distanced herself as they grew older, is the book’s character, who follows the line between sympathetic understanding and dread of exclusion, knowing acceptance and popularity can hinge on a solitary decision. She asks herself who to identify with and states that all of them are like Peter though most of them do a good job of hiding the fact that they are like Peter. Josie also asks about the difference between spending one’s life attempting to be invisible or acting as if you are what everybody would want you to be, while either way that kind of life is being faked (Picoult 25).

One parent known by the name Brian Rohrbough whose daughter was killed in the massacre openly said that the Jocks could do anything they wanted and got away with it. They could punch other students and get away with it. Teachers did not do anything at all to safeguard the other scholars from one another. Bullying was indicated the main cause of Klebold and Harris’s retaliation to committing the mass murders. This is because it made individuals dread that a relationship between bullying and mass murders existed. The Columbine massacre transformed the manner within which majority of people respond and think about bullying.

At some point, Josie tells her boyfriend Matt, “I do not understand the reason why you are picking on Peter Houghton…. The fact that you do not want to associate with losers does not translate to you torturing them, does it?” the popular and cruel jock responds, “Yes it does. Because if a ‘them’ does not exist, an ‘us’ cannot exist.” The comment by Matt is a display of a rather unlikely sense of the character’s self-knowledge, but with this, Picoult makes clear the constant bullying of Peter leading to the dreadful acts.

The Columbine mass murder sociologically concentrates on collective memory of the two students who played the constant bullying over and over in their minds that they could not handle it anymore. Minority groupings are articulated all the way through the article connected to the mass murder at Columbine since the killers were victims of bullying within their years in high school that effected in rage (Sanders and Phye 234). Harris and Klebold were regarded as a minority grouping given that they were typecasted as gothic since they were effortlessly notable from the larger populace by observable characteristics, for instance, the clothes they wore. Harris and Klebold ceaselessly revolutionized the security of educational institutions and the higher significance of bullying.

When comparing the bullying perspective of the novel “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult and the Columbine high school shooting it is apparent that bullying has largely contributed to the mass murders that took place. It is also clear that educators’ involvement is critical for putting a stop to or dissuading negative peer relations amongst youth within schools. Educators can inadvertently reinforce unconstructive peer interactions, for example, bullying by not making the grade for being concerned within their scholars lives at school (Bo?ckler 12).

Works Cited

Bo?ckler, Nils. School Shootings: International Research, Case Studies, and Concepts for Prevention. New York: Springer, 2013. Internet resource.

Campbell, Karen, “Consequences of bullying erupt in Picoult’s ‘Nineteen Minutes’ – The Boston Globe”. Boston Globe. 2007. Internet resource.

Picoult, Jodi. Nineteen Minutes. Crows Nest, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, 2010. Print.

Sanders, Cheryl E, and Gary D. Phye. Bullying: Implications for the Classroom. San Diego, Calif: Elsevier/Academic Press, 2004. Internet resource.