A Pilgrim’s Digression

I’ve been struggling for three days to find something worthwhile to say about the Virginia Tech murders on Monday, but in the end I don’t know that there is anything to say. Commentators have been asking whether we have become desensitized to gratuitous violence in society, but I don’t think my lack of response is desensitization. I’ve had moments of horror and pain akin to that other horrific day in our shared history, 9/11/01.

Oh God, the body count just kept rising all morning, didn’t it? In some ways that was the worst thing, and the most apt similarity to 9/11. Every time I tuned back in to the event, it seemed there were more dead, and I felt shocked and sickened all over again.

So I do feel pain and grief for what has happened. Lynn took foreign language classes in Norris Hall when she went to Tech for her Spanish endorsement; she had heard of the German professor who was killed, Jamie Bishop. I myself visited the campus several times during the period that Lynn took classes there. And in the ensuing years, as we continued to work in secondary schools in Virginia, we came to know many students who went on to college at Tech–thankfully we have had no word that any of them were among the victims. Nonetheless, this is personal, for us.

But in the end, there are no adequate words. Since she has a much more intimate connection with the school and its loss, maybe Nikki Giovanni will eventually find the words for us, through her poetry, but until then I am at a loss.

And then, how to explain, or cope with the fact that the murderer was an English major and creative writer? By all notions of taste, he was not a good one, but apparently there was a part of him that tried to find an outlet for his morbidity and depression via creative works. Most people are looking at his writings as a sign or symptom of his disease, when in fact maybe they were attempts at a cure.

Instead, apparently these writings turned people off and frightened them, driving the future murderer even further into isolation. For those who haven’t read his one-act play “Richard McBeef” yet, The Smoking Gun has posted it on its website. It’s pretty rotten stuff, both in terms of content and quality. But the kid was prolific, apparently having already written a complete novel, two plays, and multiple poems.

Then there are the victims, and what I think of when I hear their stories is how much they are all like the kids I taught when I was a Grad Student and then a part-time professor of English. All of them so young, so brimming with life and confidence, interested in music, politics, literature, and of course the ultimate past time, Love; none of them understanding when they arose Monday morning to go to German class or to the Engineering classroom that there would be no future for them.

There were professors who died. Jamie Bishop was only a little older than me. I’ve not set foot inside a classroom in several years, now, but I can still identify with what he must have felt. It was probably just another day for Bishop, a day near the end of the semester with a long summer to look forward to. He begins teaching material he knows by heart, material he loves to impart to students, expecting that when class is over he will go back to his office and do some grading, or perhaps some reading for a conference paper he is writing.

Then, the door opens, and he turns to see who is standing there.

In this story, a story of macabre violence that was in a sense “written” by Seung Cho, the door and the window are the primary symbols. Windows are the only means of escape, a use for which they were never intended, but the usual exits are closed. Cho chained the doors of this institution of higher learning to prevent his pupils from escaping. He has a very important lesson to teach them. People who ignored him will have to listen now.

In the hallway of Norris Hall, he walks door to door, killing without mercy, the only silence the silence that falls after he releases a spent clip and before he reloads.

Eventually, students begin closing the doors against him, using tables and chairs and sometimes using their bodies to hold them closed. In several cases, Cho shoots through the door, injuring some.

Doors close up and down the hall, until finally the murderer is left alone in a classroom with his gory masterpiece. Nothing left but to sign his name. The bullet through the mouth is the hallmark suicide of the writer, the final exit stage left.

Who can make sense of this? We will try, in future days. I am waiting for the first report that Cho listened to rap, or that he was addicted to World of Warcraft.

This is how we make sense of the irrational. We look for physical causes. Was he abused? Was he psychotic? What pushed him over the edge?

I don’t know. Does it matter? In a sense, if something so tragic can happen on a perfectly ordinary day, on a day as good or as bad as any other, to people who themselves are as good or bad as anyone else, causation seems unimportant. Our survival is a random toss of the dice. On Monday, some lived, some died, sometimes by heroic effort or quick thinking, but mostly by chance.

We should all learn a lesson from that: one day the door will open for us, too. We should be appreciative that we might not be able to close it in time to save ourselves. Appreciate all the beauty and pleasure that you have in your life right now, because it can be taken away in a heartbeat.