Homicidal or suicidal? A closer look..
Upon my fragmental re-read of Tim Krabbé’s “We Are But We Aren’t Psycho”, I stumbled upon a rather interesting tidbit. It had something to do with Dylan’s reasoning behind the massacre and how the core of that is explained time and time again as “Dylan was suicidal”. Krabbé’s exact turn of phrase reads as follows: “a boy who just cannot stop laughing while he is shooting children can no longer be understood in terms of suicide alone”.
It got me thinking.. how often do we describe Columbine and the boys in general as “Dylan was suicidal, Eric was homicidal”? And why do we do that? I find myself agreeing with Krabbé when he essentially argues that there is a complexity to Dylan’s part in the massacre that’s not strictly about suicide. Someone can kill themselves at any second without there being a massive repercussion for the life and death of others. But Dylan didn’t just kill himself: he killed others before he killed himself. What, then, was so important about the act of murder that it was the lead-up to the penultimate goal of suicide?
Some might say that he went along with the homicide for Eric’s sake. I disagree. I think that Dylan was too much “his own person”, too much of an individual, to be dragged into someone else’s idea if he himself didn’t particularly feel like doing it. Though Dylan was a people-pleaser (to an extent), the evidence also indicates that he rallied against Eric if Eric went too far and that he marched to the beat of his own drum more than he particularly marched to Eric’s. I believe he simply gives off the impression that he went along with Eric, because some things are just not worth picking a fight about. You could probably pick a fight with Eric over something as stupid as the colour of the sky. It’s too much effort to keep rebutting Eric over every little thing, right? But what about the big things, like life-and-death scenarios? I would think that Dylan would’ve gone against Eric over the murder plans if Dylan somehow disagreed or didn’t really want to do that. So, there’s a component that isn’t explained: what led the arguably suicidal individual to murder?
Then there also came the thought.. what about Eric? If I’m really going to question things about Dylan in terms of homicidal/suicidal, it would stand to reason to extend the same courtesy of thought to Eric. Eric’s always been explained away as “homicidal”. He’s seen by many as easier to pinpoint than Dylan. I would disagree on that too – few people have managed to puzzle me so utterly as Eric Harris managed to do. Some have called his suicide “an afterthought” and something that he only went through with so he wouldn’t be caught alive. But Eric, when seen as purely homicidal in nature.. that version of Eric would’ve spat “fuck that, I ain’t going out without a fight” sooner than he would’ve done what he ended up doing. There’s a suicidal component to Eric, which he himself briefly noted in his diversion papers. So what’s going on there?
We have to look at the differences between outward self-expressed motivation and intrinsic subconscious motivation if we’re going to have any hope of solving the conundrum here. I’ve found that the boys mirror each other perfectly here: Dylan’s outward motivation is Eric’s intrinsic one, and vice versa. Here’s how that works.
Outward self-expressed motivation
This is the part of the motivation for the massacre that is literally expressed toward the outside world by the boys as individuals. This is essentially the standard catch-all about Columbine, where Eric is explained as homicidal and Dylan is explained as suicidal. It’s not a wrong view – it is what they themselves expressed more and focused on more. It is something that is visible. It’s something that goes outward into the world: this is what you’ve done to me, this is how I feel, this is why I do what I do. More importantly, it is the part of their motivation that they were always aware of having.
Dylan’s journal reads as suicidal from cover to cover. He gives voice to wanting to die more than once. He doesn’t quite detail how, nor are there many indications as to which particular circumstances lead to Dylan being so caught up in his misery that he “wants out”. He gives reasons aplenty, of which a very important one is that he feels himself separate from humanity and undeserving of things. The journal sometimes gives the impression that he didn’t really know how to leave the world and still be able to give permanent voice to his suffering. If one couples that rampant suicidal ideation with the jubilant shout of “today is the day I die!” that was heard in the hallways of Columbine on 4/20, it becomes very easy to attribute that particular quote to Dylan. The day has finally come on which he is to leave this life, and he is elated: there are no more takebacks; this is it!
Eric’s journal, in contrast, reads as homicidal more often than not. Starting with “I hate the fucking world” and stranding somewhere in the middle of rant number 200 on the state of the world, it’s not hard to see that Eric was one pissed-off individual. I think it may have gotten to the point where people breathing the wrong way annoyed the hell out of him: if you somehow didn’t fit into Eric’s worldview, you might as well do him a favour and die so he wouldn’t have to put up with you anymore.That’s how it reads when you do the first couple of global reads, anyway: a rampant “everybody’s gotta die and I’m gonna be the one to take you out” that is part-bravado and part-reality. It’s homicidal ideation at its finest running alongside what Eric described as ‘racing thoughts’. The focus on them is relentless, almost like being stuck in a hamsterwheel that doesn’t have an exit.
Intrinsic subconscious motivation
This is the tricky part of the motivation for the massacre, because it’s not as easily visible as the other part is. It is something that is only expressed to the outside world sparingly, if at all, and it ends up being neglected in most of the standard material out there on the case. Yet, it’s somehow the more important to me precisely because it stays so hidden. Did the boys themselves really know the full range of it? It’s debatable. There are indications that they were aware of a small part of it, but a lot of it is subconscious. It’s something that only really goes on inside of them until those final minutes of their lives when it finally, finally comes out to play. For Dylan, it’s a surprisingly helpful companion. For Eric, it’s the debilitating factor.
Dylan doesn’t express rage or homicidal thought quite so easily. He only voices it sparingly in his journal and on the basement tapes, though it is said that he is particularly unremorseful on the latter. You can see him goofing up in the rants for Hitmen for Hire, too: Eric is the “one take wonder”, while Dylan needs a little time to really get into it. It is almost as if there is this ‘seal’ on his anger, which cannot be repaired once it finally breaks. He is angry with the world, too. He creates a shirt called “wrath” for the day of the massacre – how powerful is that as an expression of the intrinsic motivation? He wants to murder people. To hurt them the way they have hurt him. And it’s a general “them”, too, as mankind has thoroughly disappointed Dylan. Why should they get to live when his own existence has been this miserable? That internal motivation is answered on the day of the massacre. He finds himself strangely happy in the middle of it: not just because he is about to die, but also because he’s leaving the world with that message.
Eric doesn’t express many emotions other than the unadulterated ragefests. He vaguely notes disappointment, hurt, sadness even, and a tiny bit of joy.. but they’re covered by the fluffy blanket of anger throughout. Just a blink and they’re gone, swept up by the tidal wave of “I want to hurt you”. But then, well, then “everything” goes wrong on 4/20. The always punctual Eric is running late. More importantly, by the time he goes into the school, he is aware that the bombs he worked his ass off on have probably failed. He breaks his nose from the gun recoil. The plan’s a fuck-up. And somehow, somewhere, this begins to translate for him as “I am the fuck-up”. He grows quiet. Out comes the hurt he’s previously stored away inside all his anger. The anger fizzles, then dies. And all the things he didn’t want to say, couldn’t give a voice to.. they consume him. He wants to get out. To stop his mind, his heart, his soul from being here: he wants to die.
Homicidal/suicidal?
I think the question here is.. why not both? At first glance, Dylan is suicidal and Eric is homicidal. That’s how we know them best. That’s the face value of it. The part that’s easy to explain. At second glance, Eric is suicidal and Dylan is homicidal. That’s when you stop and go “wait, what?”. That’s not how you know them – not at first, anyway. But it’s there in the things that are barely said, in the way they both suppressed aspects of their emotions, and it’s important. It matters when you really want to get to know them. It means something big in the way they were as people. And, if you look at it just right, you might even get to see why that part stays hidden.
Columbine 