Was Columbine a senseless tragedy?

On the contrary, after the publication of Dave Cullen’s book, Columbine, published on the 10th anniversary of the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, that awful tragedy begins to make a great deal of sense. However, that “sense” lays not in the event itself, but it the minds of those who were its principal players in the days and months leading up to the massacre. For massacre it was: In the end, fifteen were dead, including twelve teenagers, a teacher who had tried to save as many lives as possible, and the shooters themselves.

To recount the story of “Columbine” here serves no purpose. Like the Kennedy assignation, it has become a defining moment for a younger generation. In fact, Littleton high school students were already watching themselves on TV while their school was under siege by two gunmen and would-be pipe bombers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, whom Cullen, after extensive interviews with psychiatrists and law enforcement professionals who have studied the case, has characterized as a fatal combination of a psychopath and a depressive.

What really strikes at the heart of this story, however—besides the number of people who knew of Eric Harris’ violent tendencies and may have been able to thwart the attack long before it happened—is what was on the minds of three of the twelve teenagers, ranging in age from 16-18, whose dead bodies would lie in place on the cold library floor for over twenty-four hours until a thorough investigation of the scene had been conducted. Those three teens were Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Cassie Bernall.

Eric and Dylan had been friends since grammar school. Eric was charming, smart and articulate. Girls found him attractive. Dylan, on the other hand, could be morose and explosive. Like Eric, he was extraordinarily bright. Unlike Eric, Dylan was not popular with girls. Both boys enjoyed rock music and video games. However, according to Cullen’s book, their actions do not stem from these two staples of adolescent entertainment. Rather, the seeds of Eric and Dylan’s dark choices took root in their beliefs about the world. Eric was a nihilist who left nineteen notebooks filled with rants of rage against humanity. “I will choose to kill,” he wrote in one of those notebooks. The most chilling word in that short sentence is “choose.” Dylan kept a single notebook. The most oft repeated word in it is “Love.” He drew heart after heart in his book and confessed his love for a girl who didn’t know he existed. According to Cullen, Dylan “wanted to get to godliness” but had found nothing but emptiness. Eric didn’t think he needed God. “I feel like God,” he said, “I am higher than almost anyone in the fucking word in terms of universal intelligence.” Eventually, he would dub his journal, “The Book of God.”

Cassie Bernall was an ordinary teenager. On the surface that is. In the ninth grade, Cassie began to shed her parents values in favor of the opinions of her best friend, This friend, called Mona in Misty Bernall’s book, She Said Yes, the story of her daughter’s teen years before her tragic death at Columbine, dabbled in the occult, found “spells” fascinating, liked knives and vampires and had once suggested to Cassie that they kill a teacher at school and Cassie’s own mom. “Kill your parents,” Mona wrote. “Murder is the answer to all your problems. Make those scumbags pay for your problems.” Cassie’s parents came down hard on her when they found the letters. They forbade Cassie to see Mona. They reported the incident to the police, pulled Cassie out of school, moved from the neighborhood, and found a new school and new friends for Cassie. Eventually, Cassie found herself and with that, a new found faith. She believed in God. Eventually, she would die for Him.

The day of the tragedy, Eric and Cassie met in the school library. Two teens from similar worlds, but of vastly different minds. Cassie had been reading Macbeth in the library that day; she’d told a friend a few days earlier that it was a “dark” play, one she didn’t like. One of Cassie’s favorite books was Discipleship by Heinrich Arnold.

We don’t know what Eric was reading in the days leading up to the shooting. We do know that he admired Friedrich Nietzsche and he idolized the Nazis.

In one version of that last day, Eric asked Cassie, who had sought protection under an overturned library table, if she believed in God. She said she did. He shot her in the head, killing her instantly. In another version, Eric walks over to the table where Cassie is hiding, bends down, says “Peekaboo” and shoots her without another word.

Tragedy? Yes.

Senseless? I don’t think so.

This reader will let you fill in the rest.