It was just a normal day in Littleton, Columbine. Until it wasn’t. On April 20, 1999, one of the nation’s deadliest shootings would occur in Colorado, leaving many devastated. The two behind this massacre are Eric Harris, age 18, and Dylan Klebold, age 17. Both boys were considered social outcasts at school, both hated school, hated jocks, and loved computers and video games. Despite these interests, the two are also severely different. Eric, for example, tended to have more serious anger issues, targeted toward the outside world. He would often express his anger to his “inferiors” and go on tangents about how he wanted everyone to perish from the earth. Dylan, unlike Eric, targeted his anger toward himself. Coping with depression, Dylan often …show more content…
Rachel Scott was a student at Columbine High School and like many others, she experienced many struggles normal teenagers do. She was also the first person to be shot during the massacre, which is what she is most known for. However, the impact she holds is indescribable. Throughout her teen years, she kept a series of diaries and wrote about her struggles, daily life, and much more. One example of her struggles can be found in her diary, The Journals of Rachel Scott, where she writes “But, my life as a Christian is hard sometimes. Making the right choices is hard sometimes…Knowing what’s right and what’s wrong is hard sometimes” (Nimmo and Klingsporn 30). She is also known for her kindness, which brought up the ‘chain reactions’. Though Rachel is an important figure in the Columbine story, Patrick Ireland is just as important. 20 years later, Ireland has been giving public speeches to remind people of something important. Ireland says “We have a choice of being a victor or a victim…The key to forgiveness is to stop focusing on what others have done to us, and focus on what has been done for us” (Hubbard 4). Rather than labeling himself as a ‘victim’, Ireland took his experience and changed the way he looked at it, proving to himself and others that he is a victor of Columbine. In short, Patrick Ireland is an important part of the Columbine