In the book Nineteen Minutes, you will read about characters going through some hardships not most teenagers go through in life. Yes, extreme tragedies do happen from time to time in real life communities but these characters go through twisted and messed up situations. For example, one of the main characters, Peter, decides he has finally had enough of the kids who have been bullying him for years. Peter thought his only solution was to shoot up the school of Sterling, New Hampshire. He killed many and injured even more and this is a scary example of what can happen if teenagers do not think before they talk or act because their actions might be hurting another person.

Furthermore, Peter has been dealing with bullies ever since the young age of 5 or whenever he was in kindergarten. He didn’t have many friends because he was considered an outcast. Although he did have one special friend named Josie Cormier, and he of course always had his family. As the years went on Josie and Peter grew apart and Peter continued to be bullied while his former best friend joined in with all the popular kids and got a fancy new boyfriend. Josie and her boyfriend weren’t exactly in love, in fact Josie secretly hated her boyfriend, Matt, and was only with him because she knew she would be nothing without him.

Along with dealing with a fake relationship, Josie and her mother are not the closest and are far from having a good healthy relationship with her mother. Her mother works as a judge and is very busy so Josie spends a lot of hours alone if she isn’t with her friends or boyfriend. This leads Josie to think tragic thought of suicide and she starts to slowly collect her mother’s pills that she sneaks from her time to time.

After the shooting, Peter went to trial and will find out his sentence. But what else could have driven Peter to make such a mess? Sometimes I think there is more to these kinds of tragedies than just bullying. Was Peter dealing with more than bullying?  That’s something I really have thought about a lot. Also, is Peter really responsible for the murder of EVERYONE?