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Chapter 26: April 5, 2001
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We Need to Talk About Kevin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Accountability
Marriage, Family, and Social Norms
Nature vs. Nurture
Idealism vs. Reality
Forgiveness and Empathy
Summary
Analysis
Kevin’s mass murder is the only thing that truly feels exotic to Eva. She realizes that the experience of something truly foreign is simply the longing to return home. Eva is impressed by how well-organized Kevin’s plan is. He commits the murders mere days before his 16th birthday so that he will be tried as a minor and get a lighter sentence. He also asked to go on Prozac in order to plea that the drug made him psychotic. When Eva first visits Kevin in prison, she asks why he left her alive. He responds that the murders were for her—he was trying to exact revenge on her. During one of Eva’s initial visits, Kevin holds Celia’s glass eye in his hand. Eva is horrified and warns him that if he ever shows her the eye again, Eva will never return.
Eva finally comes to a greater understanding of her need for novelty and excitement. She realizes that nothing will ever satisfy her—the only truly new experiences she’s had haven’t been positive ones. Kevin says now that he wanted to get revenge on Eva, but later, in the documentary, he says that Eva isn’t responsible for the murders. The truth, the novel seems to suggest, is that Eva and Kevin are both to blame.
Themes
Today’s date is two years since the murders. Eva goes to see Kevin in prison. Kevin is scared because he is almost 18 and will soon be transferred to an adult prison. Eva tells Kevin that she misses Franklin and Celia. She asks Kevin why he did it, and Kevin struggles to meet her gaze. He says he doesn’t know anymore. He gives Eva a tiny wooden coffin that he made. Eva knows that Celia’s eye is inside. Eva hugs Kevin as she leaves, and she thinks she hears him apologize.
Celia’s glass eye symbolizes Franklin and Celia’s blindness to Kevin’s malice. Because of Franklin and Celia’s ignorance, no one ever really acknowledges how much Eva has been through with Kevin until he gives her the glass eye, apparently as an apology. The gift could also symbolize Eva’s continued failure to acknowledge her own complicity in Kevin’s crimes: Kevin, in making this grand apology, is giving Eva permission to believe the version of the truth that allows her to live with herself, however deluded it may be.
Themes
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