Dave Cullen Columbine Massacre

Dave Cullen portrays his fascination, determination, and collectionᶜᵒᵐᵐᵃ ʳᵘˡᵉ ⁴ of the Columbine massacre by writing a first-person perspective book on one of the shooters. He shows meticulous work on every detail of the boy's lives and accumulating to the horrid acts that they committed. Dave Cullen’s nonfiction book Columbine, that accounts of the Columbine school shooting, illustrates his cardinal point that we as people should reduce the act of violence, promote peaceful inclusive societies and provide justice for all. Cullen’s account goes into detail about how Eric and Dylan led normal lives on the outside but were crazed by a mental, misguided rage on the insideᶜᵒᵐᵐᵃ ʳᵘˡᵉ ³.

He states in an interview with an unknown source: “...Two boys who seemed very normal, and had opposite personalities, moving in opposite directions, yet arriving at the same place, mass murder.” He also writes words in the book that hints at his emotion during the book, calling the killers sick and sadistic.

Writing this shows his emotion when writing this.

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It allows us to see why he has stayed intrigued by this event. Cullens words in the book might not be of use to the story but it gives us an idea of how horrible these people were and their actions. Cullen also could have put this there because he wanted to prove one of the global goals, promote peaceful inclusive societies. If Eric and Dylan had ever been shown peaceful actions or if people had treated them a little different, then this crime would probably have never happened.

Cullen wants people to stop people from thinking people are fine and wants them to know that they are fine. From his words: “The final portrait is often furthest from the truth.” Not knowing how other people because we are in fear of what will happen if we don't, but more of knowing because we would like to know.

Cullen next shows us how horribly wrong the Columbine story was stretched and exaggerated. He states:'When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window.' in an interview, he also says things about how the media was just picking and fabricating things that didn't make sense, which drove him to make the book. People had the wrong idea of this massacre and Cullen knew this. That's why he states over and over how the book took him 10 years to make, going over and over information given to him by personal accounts, the FBI and local police. Cullen most likely puts this hear because he does not agree on how the media and the law enforcement handled the information that was given to the public. The fact that the information for one of the first school shootings in history, and nobody even knew what or why it happened was despicable and the writing of this book gives the answers people have been searching for.

There have been some critics that have come out that have stated that Columbine is just a horrible event that has been stretched, exaggerated, and manipulated by Cullen. For example, an article posted by templepress, states “The book contains numerous problems, the first of which is that Mr. Cullen goes well beyond the facts of the case to produce an almost novelistic approach to the shootings.” A person could understand his statement, he nearly makes a story of the timeline and shows the event, in their words, a “Novel”. But they are incredibly wrong in their assumption. Dave Cullen makes it his vendetta to show that it took him ten whole years to accumulate enough information to write about this topic. Evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, to police, released information, to interviews, ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵃ ʳᵘˡᵉ ¹² he has done it all to put us in the mind of the shooters. And for people to think that it was rushed and had major holes is just ignorant.

The book also has a timeline showing the major actions leading up to the fateful event, with little paragraphs showing where he got the info, like from an interview, to released information, to an eyewitness account. Saying that this book isn’t well thought out and is misinformative is just plain wrong. The reason he wrote this was not to bring unnecessary attention to school shootings. He isn't even focused on where he got the information, he just wants people to know that this exists and that we should work together to bring awareness. Dave Cullen’s main goal for Columbine was to inform, persuading, and prevent. Inform people about the tragedy that was horridly misworded. Persuade people to talk to their children, check up on them, not to see if they are a possible school shooter but because you care for them. And prevent such a massacre like that from ever happening again. If we could just work together as communities, we could stop kids from seeing the only way is to take their life or the life of others. While not just children and teenagers, but for us as people of society. We are not exempt from this, in fact, it affects us at an even greater effect. We should keep the youth safe, and inform them, protect them from what is wrong and show them the right thing to do.