When it comes to dealing with school shootings, it is a sensitive and tragic subject to portray through the media. However, the media goes through a lot of work in making a spectacle out of school shootings in examining the purpose and history behind the shooter(s) motives.
There is not a lot, in terms of entertainment media, of examples that portray school shootings other than infotainment documentaries studying and analyzing the motives of shooters. However there is one New York Times Bestselling author who portrays an emotional fictional story centered around a school shooting and a trial that follows.
In Nineteen Minutes Jodi Picoult tells a story about a teenage high school boy named Peter who was bullied and finally snaps after his former best friend Josie leaves him out of peer pressure to join the popular group of kids in school and now instigates much of the bullying toward Peter. Peter decides the best way to deal with the situation is to bring a firearm to school and Josie witnesses the horrific events that follow. Josie's mother, Alex, takes on trial of Peter's case in court as the judge though her daughter is a key witness for the prosecution.
This story takes on an interesting issue surrounding school shootings where the reader is able to have an exclusive look inside the trial of the shooter and the bullying that caused Peter to react the way he did. We get an interesting insight not looking at the effects of bullying but rather the issue of peer pressure and becoming someone you are not in order to please others.
I think though the story still tries to explain the purpose and motives around the shooting there is several extra elements that people wouldn't typically expect from media coverage of school shootings--fiction or not. For example, we get the insight of a judge ruling on the trial of the shooter as well as a mother whose daughter witnessed the event and had a hand in instigating the event. Aside from that, we also get a compelling look into the parents of the shooter trying to figure out what they could have done differently or signs they may have seen toward this effect happening. The emotional involvement that Picoult portrays through these two parents is just impeccably written and has you feeling such strange emotions that are seemingly foreign to the general reader.
As in many of Picoult's books, the emotion that is transcribed into this heart-wrenching story containing such a difficult issue has readers actually sympathizing with the shooter at times, which is such a different and confusing message to portray. The media usually tries to get the public to focus on a certain focal point to understand the shooter(s) motive such as troubled home life, mental illness, school troubles--Picoult focuses on the effects of peer pressure in high school.
Picoult said she did intensive research on the Columbine shooting but she wanted less about the information behind the shooters and more about those who were impacted by the effect directly. She ended up getting a first hand account from a survivor of the Ricori shootings in MN. From the account of a young man whose friend had died in the shooting, Picoult felt a great connection as a parent and wanted to portray that through her story.
I think the most interesting narrative in this story is the one between Alex and Josie and their strained mother/daughter relationship. It explores an interesting dynamic of Alex making a choice to fix the relationship with her daughter or judging fairly without being effected about the choices her daughter made.
All in all, this is a fantastic story that plays with your emotions through such a trying ordeal and the sensitive subject of a school shooting and there is an interesting angle that Picoult takes on compared to that of media in general.
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