34 pages • 1 hour read
Walter Dean MyersShooter
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Toxic Influence of Gun Culture
The gun culture that Myers presents is not the one where people in bad neighborhoods buy pistols to protect their homes or farmers own rifles to put down sick animals. Myers presents a militarized gun culture—racists dressed in fatigues and weapons traffickers selling to underage boys. In his interview with Lash, Cameron describes buying a Galil gun from a man at the Patriot’s shooting range: “They’re not like target shooters. They’re more like military people—soldiers, I guess” (90).
Len’s father, whom Len quotes making racist remarks in his diary, introduces him to the range. As a Black kid visiting the range, Cameron admits that the incident with Dr. King’s picture bothered him. He tells Special Agent Lash: “I knew that some of the people at the range were probably racists. I knew that. They talked about being patriots and loving their country, but I knew that what they meant was loving the images they had of their country. I knew that” (75).
Cameron says he would have no problem buying in AK-47 if he had the money. He would simply go to a gun show and “look around for guys wearing combat gear” (91). At first, Cameron dismisses Lash’s suggestion that he and Len viewed a gun as an “equalizer” to the school bullies (91). However, he then admits that it’s “not a stretch” to think of a gun that way (91).
Len’s actions are influenced by several things—his father’s abuse, bullying, drugs. Myers also shows the impact of gun culture. Len’s diary documents his intense romance with guns. He writes about his plans to go to a gun show and “wander through the camouflage forest” in search of a “deadly maiden” such as a Kalashnikov (186). He also gives his take on American democracy: “One man, one vote. One gun. One shot” (195). He then writes that the racist incident involving the Martin Luther King target didn’t bother him even though it upset Cameron. On the Ides of March, he dreams about shooting: “Me with the most powerful gun in the world” (197). Len’s fantasies may have stemmed from his desire to hide his vulnerability, to be strong in the face of bullying and abuse—even if he wouldn’t admit this.
Bullying as a Catalyst for School Violence
Throughout the novel, Cameron and Len recount several incidents of being bullied. In his interview with Ewings, Cameron recalls how the bullying episodes made him feel diminished: “[…] the words that come out of their mouth may be like—'Hey, faggot, give me a dollar.’ Or ‘Hey Cameron, what are you looking at? Look someplace else or I’ll beat the crap out of you’—and what they’re really saying is that you’re nothing” (97). Other forms of bullying are mentioned in the novel, including the cruel treatment of Cameron by his father and Len’s father’s abuse of his mother. However, the anti-gay bullying incidents are most prevalent and seem to have the biggest impact on Len and Cameron.
In his diary, Len mentions Brad’s bullying several times. Recalling one anti-gay incident, he writes: “At the Ranch. Brad called me a faggot. He pushes and pushes into me” (197). Cameron recalls an incident that suggests that Len suffered more anti-gay attacks than Cameron, possibly because the jocks perceived him as gay: “Some of the Black guys in school started asking me how come I was tight with a white faggot. I didn’t want to stick up for him” (38). Len’s infatuation with guns seems to be his response to the bullies’ attack on his masculinity. It’s not a coincidence that Len sexualizes the weapons, referring to a Kalashnikov rifle as his “deadly maiden” (186).
However, while Len is clearly the target of some vicious bullying, he also bullies others, showing how abuse perpetuates abuse. For example, we see this when he cyberbullies Carla. His use of pet turtles for target practice is an example of cross-species bullying. Although Len is the victim of those who delight in humiliating those weaker than themselves, Len writes about his hatred of the vulnerable: “Why do I hate the weak? I don’t hate the month of the year? But the weak creeps up and grabs me by the throat […] Weak is always there, being obscene and not heard” (189). This may exemplify his self-hatred, sparked by being bullied.
Whether Len’s actions results from past victimization or from a combination of factors, including access to weapons, is debatable. Myers implies that there is a perfect storm of factors, and also no simple answer.
Social Effects of Dysfunctional Family Life
Cameron’s father pushes his head against a wall and tells him he is ashamed to have him as a son. Carla leaves the trailer she is sharing with her father because “all he cared about was his next beer” (108). Len witnesses his father repeatedly beating and verbally abusing his mother. Cameron, Carla, and Len all come from dysfunctional family situations, which make them have social adaptability problems. Myers makes the point that wealthy families can be just as dysfunctional as poor ones. He also shows how abuse can be catastrophic.
In his diary, Len describes how his mother never fought back against his father: “She cries in a corner and has no rage to turn against him. He walks the house, imagining himself to be the captain of some ship, woofing at his crew. Her eye is bleeding. They eye is the entry to the soul, and her soul drips blood. She cries, still waiting to appease him, waiting to slip back into his good humor” (201). From this entry, one can surmise that Len does not want to be a passive victim like his mother.
Len’s toxic family environment fits the profile of the typical school shooter. A study by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center found that “nearly every attacker experienced negative home life factors.” These “included parental separation or divorce, drug use or criminal charges among family members, and domestic abuse.” The study clarifies that one can’t use these factors to identify who will be violent, but that “past research had identified an association between many of these types of factors and a range of negative outcomes for children.”
(The U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center. “Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence.” 2019. www.secretservice.gov.)
Though Myers doesn’t single out one cause for the shooting, he shows how familial abuse played a dominant role.
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