We Need To Talk About Kevin

Franklin is Kevin’s father. He loves the idea of having a son. He is suggestible and open to Kevin’s manipulations since they play into his own insecurities and ideals about fatherhood. Franklin cannot understand why Eva cannot love Kevin, and he never sees the side of Kevin that Eva does until near the end of the story. He is uncaring toward Eva at times because he cannot conceive that she could be telling the truth about Kevin. In fairness to Franklin, Kevin never shows him the nasty side of himself until the story is almost over.

Franklin is passive aggressive but loyal. He is angry when Eva deceives him about keeping in her birth control and deliberately becoming pregnant again. He forgives her but remains resentful of Celia and her relationship with Eva. Even at the end, Franklin hopes that if he can be an ideal father, Kevin can thrive. He judges his own fathering abilities by Kevin’s success as a young man. Franklin is also an American patriot and a Republican, which are two more things that stand in contrast to Eva’s temperament and ideology.

Kevin is the son of Eva and Franklin. He is cruel, cold, and manipulative. The proclivities he shows as a child—cruelty, violence, passive aggressiveness—escalate until he commits the massacre at the school. Eva describes Kevin as being outraged at his own existence. She sees that because he cannot find meaning in anything, he hates anyone who has a passion for an activity or for life itself. He is determined to make everyone as miserable as he is. His entire life is an act of revenge.

Kevin is intelligent and cunning. Up until the massacre itself, he puts enough distance, or plausible deniability, between himself and his actions to avoid proof. He is vulnerable with Eva near the end of the novel when faced with the prospect of incarceration at Sing Sing. At the end of the novel, he shows a semblance of guilt when he returns Celia’s glass eye to Eva and admits that he feels as if Celia is watching him.