We Need to Talk About Kevin: Chapter 23: March 11, 2001 Summary & Analysis

Celia and Eva return home from a follow-up appointment with the eye doctor, and the whole family watches the news. The news reports that there was another school shooting—there have been many in the past few years. Angered, Eva mocks the culprit, a young boy who claims he shot all the girls who rejected him. Kevin compares the boy’s self-pity to Eva’s attitude about how Armenians used to be oppressed and targeted (Eva is of Armenian descent and often laments Armenians’ historical plight). Eva continues to belittle the culprit of the shooting, and Kevin tells her to “shut up.”

Kevin admires the school shooter’s work. Eva asks Kevin about girls he’s been involved with, and Kevin responds that he doesn’t date girls—he just has sex with them. When Franklin and Eva criticize the shooter on the news, Kevin defends him. Franklin says the shooter is too young to understand other people and his own future. Kevin responds that he probably understands his future too well. Eva declares that the main problem that leads to school shootings is the lack of gun control in the U.S. Franklin retorts that the real problem is bad parenting. To exemplify the type of teenager who would never shoot up a school, Franklin earnestly tells Eva, “If you don’t believe me, ask Kevin.”

Franklin asks Kevin if he thinks a mass murder could happen at his school. Kevin replies that all of classmates are disturbed. Eva says that school shootings are becoming trendy and that the more shootings there are, the more common they will become. Eva mocks school shooters for having “sob stor[ies].” Franklin criticizes her for lacking sympathy. Over the next few months, more school shootings make the news. One shooter, Kip Kinkel, kills both of his parents. He has the same initials as Kevin.

People become vigilant about the issue of school shootings, and Kevin’s own high school propagates the message that school shootings are preventable if everyone is aware of the signs of threat. Students in both Kevin’s and Celia’s schools get in trouble for innocuous remarks and jokes that are now seen as potentially threatening. As time goes on, the nationwide paranoia about school shootings intensifies to what Eva feels is a ludicrous degree. One student is expelled for carrying a chemistry book, and another for quoting a fortune cookie. Kevin keeps his parents up to date on his school’s attempts to combat the school shooting issue. Franklin becomes worried for Kevin, and Eva fears him.

Kevin predicts that if schools become too paranoid about shooters, they’re going to “give kids ideas.” He reports one day that his school went on lock down and brought in sniffer dogs due to an anonymous tip. They found a hit list in one student’s locker, Kevin reports. Eva asks about it. The student’s name was Espinoza. Kevin calls him a racial slur and an “amateur” for not removing the list from his locker. Eva asks if the lockers at his school have slits for ventilation, and Kevin says that they do.

While Kevin is at school, Eva goes through his bedroom. Kevin is always immaculately tidy, and he has few belongings. He has no art or music, and the only novel in his room is Robin Hood. Eva suspects that the lack of character in Kevin’s bedroom is a manifestation of his secretiveness about who he really is.  She finds a stack of floppy disks and takes one. She loads a file from it to her computer, and her computer shuts down. Eva confronts Kevin about the disk, and he responds that he collects viruses. She asks him why he would want to possess a computer virus. He doesn’t know how to explain. She posits that it’s to gain some kind of control, and he agrees.