Nineteen Minutes Entry 1: "Who has the right to judge someone else?"

     For this semester, I decided to read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. I have always been interested in the issue of bullying, because I believe that it is a issue that can easily be prevented. It isn't something like world poverty or pollution that could take years and years to figure out how to fix. Bullying could be stopped today, this very minute, as long as people are educated on how serious the effects of bullying are. Reading this novel gave me a much better sense of how those who are bullied feel, and also it touched on the idea of why people bully. It allowed me to get inside the head of someone who had been bullied their whole life, but I also was able to see the other side--those who committed the vicious acts of bullying.
     One question that was brought up in Nineteen Minutes was who is to blame for the school shooting that took place? Should we blame Peter, the shooter, for causing this tragedy? What about his parents for not paying more attention to their clearly depressed son? Or the popular kids who bullied Peter every day of his life? The administration and school officials for not being more involved in what was taking place in their school? One scene of the novel that remains clear in my mind was a flashback to when Peter was in elementary school. Even at that age he was being bullied. However, when his mother went into the school to talk with the teacher about making sure things like this were not to happen again, the teacher responded by saying, "I'm showing Peter how to stand up for himself. If someone cuts him in the lunch line, or if he's teased, to say something in return instead of just accepting it" (72). It's shocking to me that teachers believe the solution to prevent bullying is to have those being bullied to act in the same way as the bullies. It is wrong to tell students that they can only be protected if they fight back. It is 100% the school's responsibility to handle the bullying that takes place on school campus and they need to handle it by getting involved and punishing the kids, not telling those being bullied to fight back.
      It's hard for me to sympathize with Peter--after all, in this novel, he was a killer. But at the same time, I put a large part of the blame on others in his life. Parents have the responsibility to be involved with their children. If I had guns in my room and was constantly depressed, I would only hope that my parents would be able to recognize my change in behavior. I think that parents need to be educated just as much as students do about this issue. Obviously the parents of those being bullied need to make sure that they are getting the help and protection they need, so they do not result to such drastic measures like Peter did. At the same time, the parents of the students who do the bullying should be able to teach their children that no one has the right to hurt or judge someone else.
     Nineteen Minutes helps to demonstrate that when school shootings take place, maybe people should stop pointing their finger just at the shooter, and should take a good look at themselves. Clearly Peter had some mental issues, but at the same time, someone caused him to feel the need to walk into his school and kill the people he spent seven hours with every day. Others besides Peter needed to take the blame for the tragedy that took place in this novel. He might have destroyed their lives, but they also destroyed his.