Why did they do it? (February 2015)

This is such a basic question to ask, but it is important: Why, in your opinion, did Eric and Dylan kill?

There is no right or wrong answer - unless you're Dave Cullen, in which you're totally wrong.

...

Is it right to ask what drove them? Are not "What drove Eric?" and "What drove Dylan?" two separate questions?

I think it is right to ask what drove them, if only because they did end going NBK together. I don't buy Cullen's idea that Eric was the diabolical psychopathic mastermind who manipulated cowering emo Dylan into doing his evil bidding. Dylan wrote about going on a killing spree even before Eric did, and the reporters who did watch the basement tapes observed that Dylan seemed far more enthusiastic about murdering people than Eric did. Dylan wanted to hurt others at least as badly as Eric did. Many are willing to excuse Dylan as a suicidal depressive who befriended the wrong guy. I am not.

But there are lots of kids who are angry, depressed, and unhappy, and few of them lash out violently. Vanishingly few of them spend months of their lives plotting to blow up their high schools; even fewer try to carry out their plans. So why Eric and Dylan?

Well ... to start with, both Eric and Dylan were at or near the bottom of the high-school social pyramid. Whether or not they were bullied, per se, is almost beside the point - they were losers. Eric was a short, scrawny dork who couldn't get a prom date to save his life. (If things had gone right with some girl, might he have opted out of NBK altogether? We'll never know.) Dylan was a tall, scrawny geek with a strong aversion to showering. Dylan had more friends than Eric, but neither boy was destined to earn much respect at clean-cut, God-fearing, jock-sniffing Columbine High School.

And they craved respect. They were two white boys from some of the most-comfortable suburbs in these United States, but they were as willing to kill those who dissed them as was the most-insecure brotha in the least-hospitable ghetto.

(You do know that there are lots of guys - young guys, full of testosterone-fueled rage - who feel insecure enough about their manhood to kill people who they feel are disrespecting or demeaning them somehow? This is not an unheard-of phenomenon.)

I think that Eric was more or less telling the truth when he wrote:

Quote :

Everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit, well I will get you all back: ultimate fucking revenge here. you people could have shown more respect, treated me better, asked for my knowledge or guidence more, treated me more like senior, and maybe I wouldn't have been as ready to tear your fucking heads off. then again, I have always hated how I looked, I make fun of people who look like me, sometimes without even thinking sometimes just because I want to rip on myself. Thats where a lot of my hate grows from, the fact that I have practically no selfesteem, especially concerning girls and looks and such. therefore people make fun of me... constantly... therefore I get no respect and therefore I get fucking PISSED.

Quote :

why the fuck cant I get any? I mean, I'm nice and considerate and all that shit, but nooooo. I think I try to hard. but I kinda need to considering NBK is closing in. The amount of dramatic irony and foreshadowing is fucking amazing. Everything I see and I hear I incorporate into NBK somehow. Either bombs, clocks, guns, napalm, killing people, any and everything finds some tie to it. feels like a Goddamn movie sometimes. I wanna try to put some mines and trip bombs around this town too maybe. Get a few extra flags on the scoreboard. I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don't fucking say, "well thats your fault" because it isnt, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no. no no no dont let the weird looking Eric KID come along, ohh fucking nooo.

As Alan Prendergast wrote in a 2001 Westword article:

Quote :

That is how the journal ends -- not with the howl of the wolf-god, but the whine of the pathetic geek who can't land a prom date.

And decides everybody deserves to die.

Eric Harris was a pathetic geek who couldn't land a prom date. Sorry, fangirls, but that's your mighty idol - a 5'8" waif with a shrunken chest and a swollen arsenal.

And what about 6'3" Dylan - rangy, grimy, whiny Dylan? How did he get mixed up with this Eric character?

Well, he craved the respect that he wasn't getting, as well:

Quote :

You've been giving us shit for years. You're fucking gonna pay for all the shit! We don't give a shit. Because we're gonna die doing it.

They were two smarter-than-average dweebs who wanted to get back at their ostensible peers who denied them the admiration, respect - and, yes, pussy - to which they felt entitled. They were bored with the prospect of living dreary, normal lives and sought notoriety in death as compensation for their unhappiness in life. And they were lucky - there were times when they might have got caught, but for whatever reason they didn't. (In the end, they were unlucky - their bombs didn't work.)

I tend to believe the library witnesses when they say that Eric Harris screamed, "All jocks stand up!" He wasn't aiming at the jocks themselves so much as he was attacking boys who embodied the attributes he lacked - physical stature, confidence, presence, entitlement to respect, female attention. He was a loser who resented the winners. He wanted to be the top dog, and he decided that the only way to climb the heap was to kill his schoolmates.

Maybe, if he'd had the benefit of a little wisdom, he would have been able to realize that, ten or twenty years down the road, the losers and the winners often switch places. But maybe he was too far gone even to think about the possibilities of life beyond high school.

Anyway, that's my half-baked take. If you can do better, good for you.

Here's what I wrote ten months ago. It includes "Orgasm of Blood," my examination of the sexual dynamics of Columbine:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It is said that man does not live by bread alone, that he needs a reason to go on living that transcends the biological impulses toward self-preservation and procreation. Man needs to feel that he is part of something larger than himself, that his actions have a definite impact on the broader world around him, that the things he thinks and says and does are reflections of some profound, ultimate truth whose dimensions he cannot even begin to imagine.

I think Eric and Dylan embraced death as the one uncompromising expression of ultimate truth available to them - the one irrevocable certainty that could never be erased. They were terrified of the future - they simply could not conceive of living in a manner other than that in which they were living. But they knew that, if they put guns to their heads and pulled the triggers, they would bring death upon themselves. And they firmly believed that if their bombs and guns were good enough, they could take a lot of people with them, and guarantee their notoriety.

Suffering is bad enough, and the fear of suffering is worse. But even worse than the fear of suffering is the fear that one can never be truly happy, that none of the things one does will be enough to ease one's despair at the apparent meaningless of life. The optimist believes that suffering is a bump on the road to happiness - indeed, that it heightens happiness by drawing a clearer distinction between the good and the bad. When you reach the top of the mountain, you realize how much better off you are than when you were crawling through the desert, and you exult in triumph. The pessimist believes that happiness is a bump on the road to suffering - that the fleeting moments of happiness we experience in life are mere teases that heighten our agony by making us acutely aware of just how far from lasting satisfaction we truly are.

In a weird way, Eric and Dylan were both optimistic and pessimistic. They were optimistic enough to believe that they could attain true happiness - they truly believed that, in the process of laying waste to Columbine High School and slaughtering its students, they would achieve indescribable joy. But they also perceived that such immense joy could only be extremely fleeting - that, as soon as they had done their dastardly deed, their lives would be over. No doubt they feared the prospect of death, but they also embraced it - it was the only way to have their cake and eat it, too, so to speak. They thought they could have it both ways - they could attain the power and respect that they'd always craved, then bump themselves off and avoid having to suffer any of the negative consequences of their actions.

Do you think that either boy worried for even one minute that he might end up in prison? They both went to considerable lengths to ensure that they'd be able to end their lives on their own terms.

Eric and Dylan thought they were exchanging quantity for quality - in their minds, they were sacrificing a lifetime of potential (but by no means certain) intermittent happiness for 15 minutes of total nirvana. If they harbored any serious doubts as to their prospects for success, they never showed it - their lack of a backup plan indicated they truly believed they had figured out a foolproof way to kill hundreds of people.

What went through Eric's mind at the moment that he realized the bombs were not going off? To what emotional depths did he descend? Did he even have time to think about how much he had lost? Did he pause to think, "So far, I haven't killed anyone; if I put this gun down, I might not end up killing anyone; even if I'm caught, I might be able to talk my way out of this." Did Dylan? Or did one or both find consolation in the fact that, regardless of what did or didn't happen, they could at least guarantee their deaths - each boy knew that, by firing the first shot, he was committing himself to a course of action that could only end in his demise, self-inflicted or otherwise?

I wonder.

As far as the sex aspect goes, I think they both had a serious case of "nice guy" syndrome. Like you said, they felt entitled to pussy, to women in general.

"Oh but I'm such a nice guy, why do they go for all the Alpha meatheads? All those guys want is to get in their pants. Surely I should be the one getting laid as a reward for not having those intentions. But all I get to be is the friend."

For Eric I think that manifested more in rage (I don't mean this in a Cullen way) toward the Alpha meatheads; he was incredulous that no one was seeing his social potential. Dylan's diary entries, however, seem to indicate that he turned his perceived inferiority on himself, that he thought there must be something freakish about him to render him a virgin, or at least that others saw him that way. At the same time he did see himself as a superior, other-worldly being compared to the rest of mankind, so it's this strange mixture of confidence and insecurity, probably for both of them.

LPorter101 wrote:

As Alan Prendergast wrote in a 2001 Westword article:

Quote :

That is how the journal ends -- not with the howl of the wolf-god, but the whine of the pathetic geek who can't land a prom date.

And decides everybody deserves to die.

I love this quote. I think it fits perfectly - although it would horrify Eric.


I think you have to ask ALL of those questions: what drove Eric, what drove Dylan, and what drove them together. And I don't have any of the answers, but I think it is part of why we all keep coming back.

I feel within my heart that I know and understand why they did it. I don't have any doubts about my beliefs. But I also wouldn't expect to be able to convince someone who doesn't see the world& life the way I do.

They did it because they were whiny entitled nerds who thought the world owed them something. It's the patriarchy in action. See Elliot Rodger for an even clearer example.

Society wanted me to think that nerds were on my side.  They were good guys because they hated the jocks and the bullies just as much as I did!  Nope.  They wanted to shame me and hate me just as hard as the jocks did.

Veronica,
I guess judging by your words ,its safe to say that you are not a sympathizer of E &D's?

VeronicaisnotDead wrote:

They did it because they were whiny entitled nerds who thought the world owed them something.  It's the patriarchy in action.  See Elliot Rodger for an even clearer example.

They did it because they were mentally ill. I am sure Dylan was depressive. And Eric, I don´t know, think he had a behavior disorder.

We shouldn´t only ask why they did it, we should ask ourself why they were so ill and why no one noticed this?

PaintitBlack:

Not a fan of them at all.  I'm not a fan of destructive male rage, especially not when it leads to death.

Veronica, you aren't alone here in your views. While most people here feel some degree of sympathy for them and there are a few E &D haters, there are only 3 or so fans, of which I am one. I'm not a fan because of their rage because I don't condone or agree with the actions they took but I do understand and identify with it because I've felt it in the past. A lot of severely bullied people have.

VeronicaisnotDead wrote:

PaintitBlack:

Not a fan of them at all.  I'm not a fan of destructive male rage, especially not when it leads to death.

I think the answer is pretty simple, and is not to be found in their own words.

Both had serious personality disorders--Eric obsessive homicidal ideation, Dylan severe depression and suicidal ideation along with homicidal urges.

Because of their personality disorders, they found it exhilarating to obsess over the massacre--Eric because it satisfied his fantasies, Dylan because it provided an outlet for his depression.

But then at the end they had talked about it so much, made so many promises to each other, that they say no other way out.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]: i think you are right. just so sad that no one realized it, so it could be prevented.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has a great point. How the hell did it (and other situations like this) get to that point? I always think of that quote "three can keep a secret if two of them are dead". The signs were there but no one was able to read them.

Look specifically at Dylan. And I'm not talking about the massacre itself, but his mental state overall. Various people that knew him or knew of him said he had bad hygiene. It appears from pictures that he lost quite a bit of weight over the last year or so of his life. He was aggressive with females (allegedly hitting a female supervisor when disciplined, calling a girl in his gym class a bitch). Was nicknamed after a type of alcohol. The van break-in. Bad grades. The story about the man who killed the jocks. Now maybe none of these individually is a sign that something is wrong, but add them up. Even if you were only aware of 3 or 4 of them, wouldn't that concern you if you were someone who knew and cared about him?

With regards to Dylan's weight, I wouldn't look too much into that. I agree he does look a bit thinner but let's not forget he was around 6ft3 and only 17 years old. People of that height don't tend to start filling out until they are in their 20's. It was well documented that Dylan had a huge appetite and his friends were impressed by the large amounts he could eat.

As for his hygiene, well again, he wouldn't have been the first or last 17 year old lad to not wash his hair for a couple of days.

I'd also wager that he wasn't a raving alcoholic and that his VoDKa nickname was most probably encouraged by himself as it contained his initials.

Like wideawake said: all those things together show us a disturbing picture of a teenager. And don´t forget that eric was really open about himself. In a form he ticked off, suicidal thoughts but also homicidal thoughts. If my son would say this about himself, hell I would send him to a psychiatry, not only to a therapist. You can not handle those problems like a teenager crisis. I think if eric would be older, he would also have the same homicidal thought...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], you're right. Many people who are very tall like Dylan tend to be lanky at that age. Actually, you've kind of helped prove my point. A couple of those things by themselves are no big deal. So he didn't wash his hair every day, doesn't mean he's psycho. But all of it together is alarming.

And as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] says, Eric openly admitted on the intake form that he had homicidal and suicidal thoughts. Did no one read that damn thing? Because a glance at that form says this kid has issues.

Yes, if you see the form, you can see he was dangerous. And after the van break I would be more cautious if I would be Erics parents. I won´t blame them, because it was Erics decision to kill, but for me it´s kind of odd how they treated their son. If it is true what Nate told, Erics father found a bomb and destroyed it. What would you think if you find a bomb in your son´s room? What would you do?

em81 wrote:

Yes, if you see the form, you can see he was dangerous. And after the van break I would be more cautious if I would be Erics parents. I won´t blame them, because it was Erics decision to kill, but for me it´s kind of odd how they treated their son. If it is true what Nate told, Erics father found a bomb and destroyed it. What would you think if you find a bomb in your son´s room? What would you do?

If Eric was my son and I found a bomb in his room I think I would try to understand why he had a bomb in his room. I'd probably send him to therapy too. But wasn't Eric going to therapy? If that failed what else is a parent suppose to do?

Yes, he went to therapy. But sorry but I would call the cops if I found something like this. Sorry but there have to be more rules and punishment. Sometimes I think they didn´t take him too serious? Maybe it´s only my feeling And now I let you know: I will never have kids, so don´t worry about it.

Eric's parents were stupid. I know that sounds pretty harsh, but honestly, they were. His Father knew what a damn trouble maker he was and how he was always having confrontations with other kids. He finds a bomb and instead of punishing this kid or tearing his damn room and car apart to see what the hell else he is hiding, he just takes the bomb to the mountains and detonates it? Then, he gets this suspicious call about 'clips' from a gun shop and thinks nothing of it? If Eric were my kid, I'd know his ass was behind that as bad as he was and all the trouble he had been getting into.

His Father kept a dairy of all the bad things Eric was doing and instead of parenting him, he tried to bail Eric out and make whatever Eric was doing go away so that it wouldn't ruin his own reputation. He acted as though he didn't even like the kid. No wonder why he had no idea what was going on in the kids life. He didn't give a shit. All he cared about was whether or not Eric made him look bad. Even after Eric was dead, he acted as though he couldn't care less.

I have a 19 year old brother doing the exact same kind of shit. Always getting into trouble, stealing, doing drugs and just acting like an asshole 24/7 and instead of disciplining this kid or letting him take responsibility for the stuff he does, my family always bails him out and I can't understand why? It reminds me of Eric.

Wow Jenn, thanks for your opinion, very interesting. I have to agree that the punishment was really soft.

I must respectfully disagree with a couple of these posts. I don't blame Eric's Dad for not calling the cops on him when he found that pipe bomb. Eric had not done anything to seriously hurt anyone at this point and em81, you can't imagine how hard it would be as a parent to call the cops on your son and see them hailed off to jail and knowing you had sent them there.
I don't think I could do that. A parents instinct is to protect their child, even from getting in legal trouble if they can. Especially if the child has not done something to hurt someone .
I agree that Eric's parents did make mistakes as I think every parent does. But I don't think they had any idea what was coming in the future. I believe they thought Eric was just going through a rough patch, some adolescent rebellion and he would graduate school and start working or eventually go to college and he's be alright. Perhaps they thought that he and Dylan were a bad influence on each other but that Dylan would soon be hundreds of miles away and all would be well. I think they did love their son deeply and his death and the death he caused others has caused them great anguish.
I don't think you ever get over something like that. You just learn to live with it.
I can't believe that Wayne didn't care about the death of his son. We don't know what he went through or the anguish he suffered because Eric's parents are very private people. Apparently, they were private people before this even happened. They went to bed on April 19th living a normal life , and by the next night their world was twisted and completely torn apart in ways that I imagine its hard to understand if you haven't been through it yourself. Their lives were torn apart in even more terrible ways than the families of the victims. I don't mean to disrespect anyone else's views here but I have limitless sympathy for E and D's parents and feel the need to defend them.

If my parents would find a homemade bomb in my room they would talk it out with me , not sure why some think many would run straight to the police. I doubt most parents would do it. Unless I'd actually cause damage by it, they wouldn't send me to a psychologist or therapist or call the cops.

I bet most of us ,if not all - if Columbine never happened - but we all knew Eric and his shitty deeds, we wouldn't go around saying "RED FLAG, FUTURE MASS MURDERER". We'd most likely call him edgy or attention seeking or just a trouble maker. A teenager stealing stuff from a store, a white van, having fights with peers isn't really abnormal now. I'm actually surprised his dad kept a journal. Imo , all his "crimes" seem really petty, even the van thing. Breaking a windshield? Come on , I hit my sister's head with a rock and broke her glasses, that's much worse but no one called that a red flag.

We live in a society where we as parents feel we have to protect our children from their own mistakes. We don't want to look bad as parents, we don't want our children to suffer, we brush it off as just growing up.

I don't blame Wayne Harris for what happened. I imagine that, like most parents, he never imagined that it would turn out like this. That said, I may not have called the police but I would have certainly searched my child's car and room, and handed out some severe punishment. Would it have made a difference? We'll never know.

Wideawake wrote:

That said, I may not have called the police but I would have certainly searched my child's car and room, and handed out some severe punishment. Would it have made a difference? We'll never know.

I think you've got a point there. We can never know for sure if they would have gone through with it if they got had been caught with all the bombs and weapons. Personally, I believe if they had been caught they would have dealt with the punishment, continued planning, and gone through with it at a later date once they were sure no one suspected anything. Getting busted for stealing the equipment out of a van only fueled their rage. I can imagine if someone were to foil their grand NBK plan, they would be severely piss them off even more. They would have to be sneakier to pull it off afterwards but I think by that point nothing was going to stop them from killing. I know they wanted to kill as many as possible, but at the end of the day they simply wanted to kill and it didn't matter who or how many.

I have a question. As punishment for either the van break in or the pipe bomb wasn't Eric banned from driving his car for 3 months? I know that I read that somewhere in the early days. If true maybe Wayne figured that was punishment enough for a teenage boy as that must have been miserable for Eric to see his car there but have no way to access it.

Wideawake wrote:

We live in a society where we as parents feel we have to protect our children from their own mistakes. We don't want to look bad as parents, we don't want our children to suffer, we brush it off as just growing up.

I don't blame Wayne Harris for what happened. I imagine that, like most parents, he never imagined that it would turn out like this. That said, I may not have called the police but I would have certainly searched my child's car and room, and handed out some severe punishment. Would it have made a difference? We'll never know.

I see a lot of you saying things about Eric's Dad calling the cops. With the post I made, I wasn't implying that Eric's Dad should have called the cops. My problem with Eric's Dad is that he didn't do anything...at all. Eric was constantly getting into trouble (and I wouldn't call the things he was doing 'petty' or just normal teenage behavior). Breaking into someone's van and stealing their belongings is not petty in the least. It's not as though he went into a convenience store and stole a candy bar. He broke into someone's personal property and stole everything in it. His Father knew what he was doing and all the trouble he had been getting into and never even bothered to search through his room, his computer, his car or anything. And then when some other kids Mother comes over and says that Eric broke her sons cars windshield and started screaming at her and holding onto the door like a madman, Eric's Dad just says 'Oh we are victims too'.

Uh, how is Eric and his family a victim in that situation? How is it that someone else's Mother knew how unstable and out of control this kid was but his own parents didn't see it?

Then, you have a Doctor telling you 'Your son has suicidal and homicidal thoughts' and you still do not feel the need  to go through this kids stuff and she what the heck he is up to? Instead of disciplining him, Wayne Harris was standing up for him and defending him. Hence, making Eric's planning a massacre a lot easier. Eric was their responsibility and I do not think they did the best job they could have done with getting to the bottom of this kids behavior and punishing him for the things he was doing. But, like others have said, it may have not made a difference. But it may have. Especially if Eric actually wanted to get caught. Which, I think that he did. He left plenty of signs making me think he wanted to get caught and not go through with it.

I just want to add that I do realize that it was their son and probably their natural instinct to defend him. They didn't want to believe he'd be involved in these things or he was probably good at talking his way out of it. I've seen this with my own family and how they defend my brother. Me personally, I say punish the kid and let them take responsibility for what they do. But eventually, as a parent, you have to realize that maybe the problem actually is your own child and not everyone else. This is where I think the Harris' messed up.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]: what do you think was the reason why eric wanted to get caught?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], I can't say for sure why Eric wanted to get caught, but I do believe he was leaving behind a lot of signs that he did want to get caught. A few things in his journal lead me to believe that he wasn't 100% sure he wanted to go though with it. He was saying things like "This could still be avoided". He was telling his Doctor that he felt homicidal and suicidal, like he was looking for help. Common sense tells me that if someone was desperately trying to hide the fact that they were getting ready to commit a massacre that they wouldn't go off telling their Doctor that they had homicidal ideations. That would just raise all kinds of red flags (ironically though, in Eric's case, it didn't).

Eric also left some kind of cassette tape sitting on his kitchen counter in plain sight where anyone could have gotten a hold of it. He was also really sad and crying (apparently) on video about missing old friends and wishing he could go back to a happier time. He uploaded files of some sort into the schools servers an entire day before the shooting.

I just get the feeling this kid was having a lot of second thoughts and perhaps feeling guilt and regret. Of course there is no way to know for sure but that is just how I feel about it. Eric was the one depressed and crying on video, yet, according to Cullen, Eric was just the psychopath.

Now Dylan, on the other hand, I get the feeling he wasn't feeling any kind of guilt or second thoughts. He was counting the hours until he'd be dead. In fact, I still say that Dylan's main reason to go through with this thing was to get up the nerve to finally commit suicide.

Jenn wrote:

Eric was the one depressed and crying on video, yet, according to Cullen, Eric was just the psychopath.

"My parents are the best fucking parents I have ever known. My dad is great. I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse, but I do. This is going to tear them apart. They will never forget it." quote of Eric from one of the videos he made alone.

I'm pretty sure psychopaths don't feel guilt, regret, or love. All of which are expressed in this quote.