A Shooting Disorder

Once Billy, Lazzaro and Edgar Derby were talking Lazzaro started talking about revenge, and that it was the sweetest thing in life. (139) Lazzaro´s personality and the way he talked reminded me of the shooting that happened in Norway a few months ago, and the Virginia Tech Massacre that occurred 2 years ago. Both were deadly shooting, that took many by surprise. In that first one a man called Anders Behring Breink bombed a few government buildings in also and then headed for an island summer camp for young people, killing about 80 people.

In Virginia Tech, a man called Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, and then committed suicide. The people he killed were university campus students. He first killed two people at around 7:45 in the morning, and two hours later he killed the rest.

These two massacres, like many others can occur for many reasons. People may have different views, and reasons to do so, but when cases like these happen, especially when one man does everything, mental problems have to be involved.

When Paul Lazzaro talks about getting revenge with the Blue Fairy Godmother he says the following: “I´m gonna have him shot…He´ll get home after the war. He´ll be a big hero. The dames´ll be climbing all over him…a couple of years´ll go by. And then one day there´ll be a knock on his door. He´ll answer the door, and there´ll be a stranger out there. The stranger´ll ask him if he´s so-and-so. When he says he is, the stranger´ll will say, “Paul Lazzaro sent me.” And he´ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger´ll let him think a couple of seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life´s gonna be without a pecker. Then he´ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away.” (pg. 140) Before that he also tells Billy about a time when he killed a dog by making him eat a steak with knives inside, because the dog bit him.

 

Lazzaro´s case is different than Cho´s or Breink´s, because war can have a lot of effects of people, but still there has to be something wrong inside all of their heads. It is not normal to kill 80 young people, or 32 university students, not matter what your reasons or beliefs are. And it´s not normal to have revenge on a dog because he bit you.