We Need to Talk About Kevin Themes

Eva, Kevin’s mother and the narrator of We Need to Talk About Kevin, feels guilty from the day she gives birth to Kevin. At first, her guilt stems from the fact that she feels no emotion toward Kevin when he is born. This makes her feel like a failure, both as a mother and a wife, as she knows that her indifference toward motherhood causes Kevin and Franklin, her husband…

Eva’s ambivalence about motherhood and embracing traditional gender roles is at the root of her family’s trouble. Unequivocally, Eva does not want to be a mother, yet she ultimately chooses to become pregnant for Franklin, who has always wanted to be a father. After becoming pregnant, Eva expects (or, at least, hopes) that she will naturally fall into her role as a mother—as society seems to imply she will—but she never does. After…

Eva is often unnerved to find that she is similar in some ways to her son, Kevin, and one such similarity is that they both seek excitement in novel ways. Prior to Kevin's birth, Eva was an enthusiastic traveler, seeking novelty in exploring new countries. However, she eventually discovers that these adventures no longer satiate her desire for excitement, so she turns to a new endeavor—motherhood—to reignite the passion she once felt for travel…

In the letters that make up We Need to Talk About Kevin, Eva often asks her husband, Franklin, to forgive her for being a bad mother. Though Franklin is dead, Eva is desperate for his forgiveness, and she seems to think that if he understood the trouble she went through with their violent and problematic son, Kevin, (trouble that Franklin refuses to acknowledge when he’s still alive), then he would be able…