Victims vs. Perpetrators Theme Analysis

By depicting a main character, Peter Houghton, who is severely bullied and goes on to kill 10 people at his high school, Nineteen Minutes explores the often blurred line between victim and perpetrator. One of the key questions the novel asks is whether Peter’s history of being victimized by others mitigates his responsibility for his crime. The same question applies to Josie Cormier, another student at Peter’s school who shoots her abusive boyfriend, Matt Royston, amid the chaos of Peter’s attack. Overall, the novel shows that the binary between victim and perpetrator isn’t absolute—people who are victims of bullying or abuse can also be perpetrators of violence. At the same time, it also emphasizes that committing violence and cruelty against others is not an inevitable or excusable outcome of being victimized oneself.

The book shows that Peter has been bullied to a harrowing degree, and in this sense is the quintessential example of a victim. To a certain extent, this makes questionable the extent to which Peter can be blamed for murdering 10 people at his school. From his very first day of kindergarten right up until the point that he commits the school shooting in high school, Peter is subjected to relentless abuse. Among his many torments, he is taunted, beaten up, called names, and forcibly stripped in front of his schoolmates. As a result, Dr. King Wah, the forensic psychiatrist who examines Peter during the trial, establishes that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This indicates that the abuse Peter suffered has actually changed his brain chemistry and decreased the control he has over his own actions. Furthermore, Peter’s lawyer, Jordan McAfee, hopes that Dr. Wah’s diagnosis will help persuade the court that Peter should receive a more lenient sentence.

The idea that Peter’s victimhood decreases his blameworthiness for the shooting his further conveyed by Jordan’s decision to use “battered woman syndrome” in his defense argument. As Jordan explains to his wife, Selena, the battered woman syndrome argument has historically been used by lawyers defending women who kill their abusive partners. As the narrator explains, “Monsters didn’t grow out of nowhere; a housewife didn’t turn into a murderer unless someone turned her into one. The Dr. Frankenstein, in her case, was a controlling husband. And in Peter’s case, it was the whole of Sterling High School.” This idea suggests that Peter only becomes a perpetrator because he was originally a victim. Without being bullied, Peter likely would have never become violent and killed people himself. This means the shooting could arguably be considered an act of self-defence, which theoretically decreases the blame that ought to be placed on Peter.

Jordan’s use of the battered woman syndrome defense links the book’s exploration of Peter’s victimhood to that of Josie. Throughout the novel, it remains unclear why Peter spared Josie during the shooting and what exactly happened when Josie’s boyfriend, Matt, was killed. At the same time, over the course of the non-chronological narrative, it is revealed that Matt is abusive toward Josie. He is highly controlling, cruel, manipulative, violent; he breaks her leg and pressures her into sex without a condom. Toward the end of the novel, Josie is called as a witness during Peter’s trial and ends up confessing to having shot Matt herself. The novel never fully exposes Josie’s thought process in the moment she shoots Matt; instead, it suggests that her decision is an almost instinctive reaction triggered by the confusion, panic, and terror of the shooting. In this sense, Josie herself betrays signs of both post-traumatic stress disorder and battered woman syndrome. Having been victimized by Matt (and, once the shooting starts, Peter), Josie becomes cut off from her own thoughts and loses control of her actions. Importantly, this is a contrast to Peter, whose decision to perpetrate the mass shooting is premeditated. Furthermore, while Josie experiences immediate and palpable regret after shooting Matt, Peter doesn’t exhibit much remorse for the murders he commits.

Although the novel does make it clear that perpetrators of cruelty and violence are often themselves victims, it also does not entirely exonerate those who harm others simply because they have been victimized themselves. This is reflected in the sentencing of both Peter and Josie: despite Jordan’s efforts, Peter is sentenced to life in prison, whereas Josie is sentenced to five years (which is actually a comparatively light sentence considering that in the real world, many women who kill their abusive partners also receive life sentences). As these verdicts show, being victimized is generally not seen as an excuse to commit violence against others in the eyes of the law.

The book also refutes the idea that victims should be forgiven for perpetrating violence by emphasizing that pretty much everyone in the world is simultaneously a victim and perpetrator, and that everyone contains a capacity for enormous cruelty within them. Disturbingly, the fact that Peter has been bullied does not stop him from bullying others. In middle school, he taunts a classmate named Dolores Keating for getting her period because it momentarily creates a sense of belonging between him and the other kids (although he does stop once she starts crying). Later, in prison, Peter is assigned to share a cell with a boy who appears to be a “special needs kid.” Peter stamps on the boy’s glasses for no reason, demonstrating that he can be just as senselessly cruel as the bullies who tormented him at Sterling High. This suggests that there is no such thing as people who are entirely victims or entirely perpetrators. In reality, all people have a mix of both within them, and it is up to them whether they use their experience of victimhood to be more empathetic toward others or to perpetrate further abuse.