Commenting on E&D's journals

So, I thought we should have a thread where members are able to quote excerpts from the Columbine shooters' diaries and comment on them, since we obviously can't interract with their ashes.

I'm not sure how much we can talk about this excerpt, but it is a writing by Dylan (a loose paper, not a journal entry).

I find all of his writing to be sad on some level, but this paragraph devastated me. It is like he is almost asking for help, but afraid to tell anyone how he feels because it will make him "human". I can see how lonely he feels and how much he wants to relate to someone or have his feelings acknowledged as valid in some way.

He really felt suicide was his only option for happiness.

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ETA: This entry also shows that he thought he MIGHT have had a chance for love in this life, based on the last sentence. I think towards the end he abandoned that idea.

Quote from Eric's journal;

Quote :

”I fucking can’t get enough of the swastika, the SS, and the iron cross. Hitler and his head boys fucked up a few times and it cost them the war, but I love their beliefs and who they were, what they did, and what they wanted”

Really? Most of the Nazis were brainwashed by Hitler and followed orders without protesting, like robots. Isn’t that exactly the kind of people you hate? Brainwashed people who can’t think for themselves?
(Yes, I am gonna address E & D as if they're alive to read this).

Eric was a bit of a hypocrite...

He hated a lot of things that he hated about himself.

He was a teen smoker, but how much he actually "smoked" is debatable, I think he picked it up from Dylan or another one of his friends but he hated teen smokers on his website.

He loved school but hated schoolwork, but it always seemed like the other way around for me.

Screamingophelia wrote:

Eric was a bit of a hypocrite...

He hated a lot of things that he hated about himself.

He was a teen smoker, but how much he actually "smoked" is debatable, I think he picked it up from Dylan or another one of his friends but he hated teen smokers on his website.

He loved school but hated schoolwork, but it always seemed like the other way around for me.

He only made excuses for himself, too. We could start an entirely new thread just to list Eric's hypocrisies.

Eric's journal is SO angry, while Dylan's is so so sad.

” lesbians are fun to watch if they are hot but still, its not human. its a fucking disease. you dont see bulls or roosters trying to fuck do you? no, I didn't think so. women you will always be under men. its been seen throughout nature, males are almost always doing the dangerous shit while the women stay back. its your animal instincts, deal with it or commit suicide, just do it quick. thats all for now. -- 5/20/98 ”

Oh really, you are gonna bitch and moan about how society is smothering peoples individualism and then do the exact same thing?

You are not self aware, rather confused, and you change your beliefs any way you can to give yourself some sense of power, just like society does, just like the jocks do, and just like everything you hate.

Maybe you should have defined your beliefs before you started to fight for them and then maybe your mind wouldn't have been shattered enough for you to be able contribute so much to the pain that hurt you in the first place.

Glamazon wrote:

Quote from Eric's journal;

Quote :

”I fucking can’t get enough of the swastika, the SS, and the iron cross. Hitler and his head boys fucked up a few times and it cost them the war, but I love their beliefs and who they were, what they did, and what they wanted”

Really? Most of the Nazis were brainwashed by Hitler and followed orders without protesting, like robots. Isn’t that exactly the kind of people you hate? Brainwashed people who can’t think for themselves?

I think he just liked the violence that the Nazis had wrought. I doubt his thoughts about individualism really factored into that.

Littlelo wrote:

Screamingophelia wrote:

Eric was a bit of a hypocrite...

He hated a lot of things that he hated about himself.

He was a teen smoker, but how much he actually "smoked" is debatable, I think he picked it up from Dylan or another one of his friends but he hated teen smokers on his website.

He loved school but hated schoolwork, but it always seemed like the other way around for me.

He only made excuses for himself, too. We could start an entirely new thread just to list Eric's hypocrisies.

Eric's journal is SO angry, while Dylan's is so so sad.

That thread would be very long.

Even when Dylan writes out his anger in his journals there is this air of melancholy. Only when he writes in Eric's yearbook do we see him get very angry and dark. Depression is a scary disease, I've been suffering with it for a LONG time and when you're a kid it's brutal. The more I learn the more I can relate to Dylan in a lot of ways. It must have been hell being in his own head all the time.

I think Eric only wrote a page in Dylan's and Dylan wrote like 7 in Eric's.

I thought the same thing about him writing in Eric's yearbook. He doesn't write quite like that anywhere else....

Do we know when Eric's yearbook was released vs when Dylan's journals were released?

I ask because it may be another reason why Dylan's rage and anger was never really discussed. I still remember that Dylan was known as more of the shy follower long before Cullen's book came out.

I don't know the answer to that (I always assumed they were released at the same time) but it's interesting to think about.

I'm not saying I buy into Dylan as the depressed follower 100%, but when you read testimony from friends, even they say they think he was pulled into NBK. I think they were trying to reconcile his actions by putting blame elsewhere.

I say this because there are plenty of people who reported that Eric was shy and withdrawn before the shooting, but it seems like people chose to ignore that. They needed the boys to fit into these personas they had in their minds.

Agreed. A lot of people knew Dylan for longer as well. It could be a coping mechanism on their part. Dylan would never want this... he was hanging out with Eric, uh oh he's troubled so that must be it.

It seems like people ignore(d) any depression or sadness on Eric's end and focus on his anger and vice Versace with Dylan.

Quote from Eric's diary;

Quote :

It’s ok if I am a hypocrite, but no one else. Because I am higher then you people, no matter what you say. If you disagree I would shoot you

Look, nobody likes a hypocrite. By all means, have an opinion (no matter how extreme it is), but constantly contradicting yourself just makes you look like a hypocrite and makes people think that you don’t actually believe in what you’re stating.

QuestionMark wrote:

I think he just liked the violence that the Nazis had wrought. I doubt his thoughts about individualism really factored into that.

I suppose that's the case.

I do not personally condone the boys' actions, but I do feel bad for them and that the whole shooting could have been avoided. At least Dylan being stopped from going through with NBK. Dylan was never diagnosed with depression/suicidal thoughts, but he most certainly showed signs of them. Dylan, in my eyes only committed this act not in that he wanted to kill, but he wanted to die. Sue Klebold talked about this on her TED talk, which can be found on youtube. She said that when suicidal ideation goes untreated for a long period of time, they can turn into a reality, or become murder-suicides, just like Dylan's. For Eric, I believe that he wanted to kill. In his journal he stated, "I'm full of hate and I love it," which, under my interpretation, is that he wouldn't mind killing the way he did. After all, he did talk about Nazism (which I personally don't support, but I mean this is Eric we are talking about.) which is a hate group. So, I conclude that Dylan didn't truly have the desire to kill, but to die. (Eric, just switched around)