Reflections on Virginia Tech

A senseless massacre that teaches us nothingA YOUNG man comes into Lucinda Roys office. She is the head of English at Virginia Tech, a university. He is a student whose bloodthirsty creative writing has set off alarm bells. He insists that his teacher is over-reacting. He is not really angry, he says. His poetry is satirical; it is supposed to make people laugh. His sunglasses and cap half-hide his face. He speaks in the softest voice I have ever heard coming from a full-grown man, says Ms Roy, so soft in fact that I have to lean forward to hear him.That was in October 2005. Eighteen months later the young man shot and killed 32 people, mostly fellow students, without uttering a word. Then he killed himself. As the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre approaches, crazed gunmen are in the news again. A jobless man in New York state murdered 13 people on April 3rd. A jilted husband shot up a nursing home in North Carolina on March 29th. Why do such horrors happen? Some people are turning to Ms Roys new memoir to find out.