Summary Of Dave Cullen's Novel 'Columbine'

Playing the Game In Dave Cullen’s novel Columbine, he tells the story behind the school shooting at Columbine High School. He gives us a lot of background behind the killers. The two killers, Dylan and Eric, act as normal as every day students in a school. Dave tells us “Psychopaths don’t act like Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates. They come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role” (240). Eric and Dylan throw a curve ball to their pupils by playing the game of a psychopath. Dylan hides his pain and loneliness behind the walls of his pencil and paper. “Dylan’s mind raced night and day: analyzing, inventing, deconstructing. He was fifteen, he had tagged along on the missions, he was Eric’s number one go-to guy, and none of that mattered. …show more content…
Eric gets all of the attention and all of the ladies. Eric can play the game of a psychopath. He gives people what they want to hear, “Eric was seething as he scrawled out his answers, and he practically told them so on the form. The nerve of these lowlifes judging him. He explained how he hated fools telling him what to do. In the interview, he apparently directed his anger at other fools. They fell for it. Eric would howl about it later. The partial confession was his favorite con of all. He would turn over half his cards and still pull off the bluff” (218), but little do they know he is a mass murderer. Eric really does not show the signs of a psychopath because he knows how to play the game of one. These killers do not fit the average stereotypes based on killers. They do not seem sketchy. They seem like normal high school students. Eric and Dylan throw a curve ball to their pupils by playing the game of a psychopath. They act more like Hugh Grant instead of Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates, who are very revealing by their actions. Pupils of Eric and Dylan still cannot believe they walked in the same halls as murderers, because by their actions, they were just normal teenage