School Shootings And Bullying In Nineteen Minutes By Jodi Picoult

The great majority of school shootings are perpetrated by victims of bullying. School shootings are deadly and alarming, but bullying is intimidating and greedy. These subjects intertwine together because bullying can lead to school shootings. School shootings and bullying both happen in a school environment. Bullying is an aggressive behavior usually among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. A school shooting is an occurrence in which a student uses a gun at school. School shootings and bullying are major subjects in the novel Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. A character in the novel named Peter is a victim of bullying and he takes matters into his own hands by committing a school shooting in his own high …show more content…
When bullying occurs, some victims do not tell anyone about the bullying because they want to keep their feelings in to feel safe. Victims also try to solve their own bullying problems and take matters into their own hands with the bully. In Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, bullying is connected to school shootings as shown through the characters’ actions and plot twists in the novel. Victims of bullying usually do not tell anyone about the bullying and take their own revenge against the bully. Victims believe they have been treated unfairly and because they feel they have been wronged, so they lash out against the bully. When victims lash out, others become intimidated and then the victim feels safe. A reference source says, “In other cases, the victim told no one, but took his or her own revenge against the bully, sometimes with deadly results” (Bullying). In the novel, Peter is the victim of bullying, so he took revenge on the bully plus the other students who happened to be intertwined within the shooting and multiple students died during the shooting due to Peter’s actions of revenge. The school shooting that Peter committed is connected to bullying because he wanted