Nineteen Minutes- Outside Reading Post 2

What are the major struggles and conflicts that your characters encounter? How do the characters face the conflicts and how does going through these conflicts help the characters to learn more about themselves?

In the novel Nineteen Minutes, one main struggle is how to manage grief. Another struggle is dealing with bullying. Characters also struggle with staying true to themselves and being real. Each character faces these conflicts in different ways but they all manage to learn more about themselves.
Josie Cormier struggles greatly with her grief of losing some of her best friends and her boyfriend from the school shooting. She can't believe that those significant others in her life are officially gone and that she has to continue on living while they aren't. However, Josie finds this experience a little freeing. When Josie was in this friend group, she was with a group who felt superior to the rest of the school and went to the extent of bullying others- which ultimately led to Peter Houghton's shooting. Josie's boyfriend Matt was also physically and mentally abusive to her, "'You made me look like an idiot,' Matt said. 'I told you it was time to go.' Bruises bloomed on her skin where he held her fast, as if she were a canvas and he was determined to leave his mark. She went limp beneath his hands: instinct, a surrender" (Picoult 227). After the whole incident, Josie becomes more truthful with others about herself, and she becomes more real. Although the school shooting was horrifying, it really helped Josie in the long run. She got a chance to start over and do things her own way without fearing the judgment of others.

Peter Houghton struggles greatly with bullying. He is tormented at school and physically abused, but it's the mental abuse that hurts him the most. Peter grows to hate himself and others. Finally, he plans to end it all, so he comes to school with a gun and shoots all those who bully him. Peter spends a lot of time in his jail cell waiting for the verdict and reminiscing, and reflecting on why he did such a terrifying thing. Peter has many flashbacks and the anger and hurt flood back to him, but through learning about the past readers learn a lot about Peter. Peter feels great regret during the trial, when he hears the stories of the many people and families that he has so brutally effected. We learn that Peter really is not a killing monster, but is just a scared boy who wants to end the pain. Peter realizes that he is not alone during this process, and that bullied kids across America support him. Eventually Peter regrets the deeds, and regrets the extreme pain he caused, but he also is glad that he could help make a difference in bullying.

Through such tough conflicts, characters learn more about themselves and their struggles. They realize that they at first they handled their problems without thinking things through or realizing the consequences or effects it had on them and others. In the short run, it caused a great amount of pain to all, but in the long run, these conflicts had helped develop characters and make them stronger.