We Need to Talk About Kevin: Chapter 15: January 17, 2001 Summary & Analysis

The narrative flashes back to Kevin’s childhood. Kevin is still in diapers when he enters kindergarten. At first, he simply sits motionlessly at school. After a while, some of the other students seem disturbed when they see him, but Eva isn’t sure exactly why. Some of the kindergarten’s plants die mysteriously, and Eva notices that bleach is missing from the house. One day, Kevin drops another kid’s beloved tea set on the ground, breaking it. Eva tries to explain to him why this was wrong, but Kevin doesn’t care about any object the way the girl cared about her tea set. Eva remembers that Franklin replaced the water gun she had once destroyed, but Kevin never touched the replacement. Eva got the feeling that Kevin was somehow happy that Eva destroyed the gun precisely because he cared about it. 

There is a girl at Kevin’s kindergarten who has severe eczema all over her body. Eva hears her mother warn the girl not to scratch it, and the girl resists even though it’s very itchy. One day, Eva comes to pick up Kevin and finds him in the bathroom with the girl. She is covered in blood. Eva isn’t sure whether Kevin was merely present while the girl scratched herself, or whether he somehow caused the damage. Eva is upset with Kevin, and she doesn’t change his diaper that day. Franklin comes home to find Kevin’s excrement all over the house. Franklin and Eva argue, and Eva says that she’s sure Kevin had something to do with the girl scratching her eczema. She didn’t change his diaper because the way he reacted to the girl scratching herself unsettled Eva, and she found changing him “too intimate.”

Franklin insists that Kevin is perfectly normal. Eva reminds him that one time Kevin was in a play group, and kids mysteriously dropped out one by one until the group dissolved. Later, Eva found out that the group had secretly reconvened without Kevin. Franklin dismisses this, saying Eva should be offended on Kevin’s behalf. Franklin blames the other kids’ stay-at-home moms for being cliquey and gossiping. 

Eva is sure that Kevin doesn’t use the toilet precisely because he knows that Eva and Franklin want him to use it. The summer after kindergarten, Eva tries to review numbers with Kevin. He pretends not to know how to count, but then he quickly and unenthusiastically counts perfectly from 1 to 100. Eva learns that he pretends not to know a lot that he does know, and he also pretends to know things he doesn’t. This way, it’s impossible to decipher how much he actually knows. Eva thinks that this is all intentional, and that Kevin makes her feel useless on purpose. Trying to teach him is never satisfying. Eva misses Franklin during the day, and she misses her old life, when she could spend her time learning about history and culture.

One day, Eva changes Kevin’s diaper, and he soils himself immediately afterward. She changes him again. Then she tries to get Kevin to write a sentence, and he finally writes that everyone thinks Eva looks old. At the same time, she smells that Kevin has soiled himself for the third time. She lifts him by the waist, checking his diaper to confirm. She’s enraged when she sees his excrement, and she throws him across the room. He hits the edge of a steel table. For the first time, Eva notes that his facial expression shows interest.