Killing Mr. Griffin

“Still, Mark had that look about him, the one he got when he had some incredible plan in mind. It wasn’t really that his expression changed; Mark had one of those faces that seldom carried any expression at all. It was a lineless face, built on a triangle with the skin stretched taut and smooth from the wide cheekbones to the sharply pointed chin. The thing that changed was the eyes. They became very bright and shiny, as though they were made of glass, and the lids slipped down over them as though to conceal the look beneath—an illusion of sleepiness.”

Mark’s intimidating characterization is developed through the juxtaposition between his typically blank face and the depth of his eyes. The simile of Mark’s eyes as imitative of glass implies that Mark has a natural veneer about him. Duncan uses the term “illusion” as a way of foreshadowing that Mark’s personality hides his true intentions and darkness.

“The author had given some surprisingly high number of such cases and had said that runaway wives in America were soon going to equal or exceed the number of runaway husbands.”

This quote addresses a fundamental fear for teenagers: The dissolution of any stability in their home lives. This quote also highlights the American culture around single families, and further implies the desire to run away.

“In fact, if a programmer had planned the most unsuitable partnership imaginable, Brian and Cathy Griffin could have been the outcome. Brian had his master’s degree in English from Stanford University; Cathy had been a C student in high school and had never gone to college. He had until recently been assistant professor in English at the University of Albuquerque; she had until two months ago sold contemporary sportswear at a department store. Their personalities were as different as their backgrounds.”

Brian’s characterization is made more complex by his relationship with his wife Cathy. While Brian initially seems stuck-up and dismissive of people he deems less intelligent than himself, his marriage to Cathy proves that academia is not the defining factor of his life. He and Cathy are different, but their differences don’t get in the way of a loving and equitable relationship. If Brian’s students knew this part of his life, they may view him through a more empathetic lens.

“I’d teach, damn it! I wouldn’t baby them or play games with them. I’d push each one into doing the best work of which he or she was capable. By the time they finished a class with me, my college prep students would be able to handle university work.”

This quote reveals Mr. Griffin’s intentions behind his strict demeanor and classroom policies. Mr. Griffin doesn’t want his students to be miserable in his class; he wants to prepare them for the rigor of life outside of high school. Mr. Griffin has the best interests of his students in mind, even if he doesn’t know the best way to empathize with them.

“‘Yes, I do.’ She stood her ground. ‘Not personally, maybe, but I know her. What you just said to me—"you are real—you’re a person—you’re Cathy”—that matters, Brian. Tell her that. “You are real—you are Susan—you are a writer.” You don’t have any idea how much it matters, to be real.’”

Cathy encourages Brian to extend kindness to his students. She understands the importance of positive affirmation and wants Brian to see positive affirmation as important in raising children and looking after students. This quote highlights that Brian doesn’t know how to humanize his students and care for their emotional wellbeing the way he cares about their academic rigor.

“It will be different, she thought, when the baby comes. It will all be different. Once he’s a father, he will be able to give love more easily. He’ll be able to reach out to all of them then, and touch them. It will be different—in only months now—when the baby comes.”

Cathy’s hope for the future foreshadows the danger Mr. Griffin faces. With a baby on the way, Mr. Griffin’s safety is important. Cathy is also intimately aware that Brian can come across too gruff and stern. This quote also foreshadows tension because the title of the novel implies that Brian will not be around for the birth of his child.

“A line of poetry sprang into his head, unexpectedly. ‘Who would have thought the old man had so much strength in him!’ No—that wasn’t it—it was ‘blood’—'had so much blood in him.’ Where had he heard that? In class, of course. It was something from Shakespeare. The realization filled him with a surge of unreasonable fury. Griffin had them brainwashed! Shakespeare was coming out of their ears!”

Mr. Griffin’s strict teaching does work: Jeff remembers a Shakespearean line as he finds himself in a Shakespearean situation. Notably, this line is spoken by Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, foreshadowing her participation in the King’s murder. Lady Macbeth is eventually driven mad by her guilt over the murder and the continued mayhem of her husband’s murderous lust for power. This is a fitting allusion for this situation, in which Jeff, like Lady Macbeth, has gotten ahead of himself and activated a murderous situation that he swiftly loses control over.

“As Mark had said, it had all gone perfectly, just as they had visualized it. But one thing had happened for which she had not been prepared. The word Mr. Griffin had shouted as the bag came down upon him had been, ‘Run!’ His concern in that instant had not been for himself, but for her.”

This quote reveals the moment Susan’s participation in Mr. Griffin’s kidnapping develops an edge of regret. Susan, like the other teenagers, believes that Mr. Griffin doesn’t care for them and is strict because he thinks he’s better than them. But in the moment in which Mr. Griffin is most in danger, he thinks first of Susan. Mr. Griffin reveals that his heart is bigger than the students think, and their misconception of Mr. Griffin has gone too far.

“Betsy was not accustomed to being thwarted. For most of her life she had gotten what she wanted when she wanted it. An only child, she had been born conveniently to parents who wanted a daughter. The fact that she had also been born blond and cuddly and had smiled early and often had made her reception even warmer.”

Betsy is characterized as spoiled and deceptively cute. Betsy’s outside appearance is in direct juxtaposition with her inner self, which is mired by over-confidence and a desire to be liked, no matter the cost. Though Betsy’s exterior makes her seem like an unlikely suspect for a kidnapping turned murder, Betsy’s outside hides her true potential for badness.

“‘We are your students, present, past and future,’ Mark told him, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly with the closest Betsy had ever seen him come to a smile. ‘We are representatives of every poor kid who has ever walked into your dungeon of a classroom. We come to bring you “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” ‘We’re here to deliver revenge.’”

This quote pronounces Mr. Griffin’s punishment and hints to Mark’s past with Mr. Griffin. It is also featured as the epigraph of the novel, highlighting its importance. Mark speaks on behalf of all of Mr. Griffin’s students, as though all the teacher’s students feel the same murderous anger towards Mr. Griffin as he does.

“It had been a dumb idea right from the beginning. People didn’t go around kidnapping other people just because they didn’t like them. There was nothing amusing about it, nothing to be gained by doing it. If anyone but Mark had suggested it, he would have told him he was nuts. But somehow with Mark things always seemed so sensible.”

This quote emphasizes the absurdity of the plan. The plan to kidnap Mr. Griffin was misguided; the kind of plan adolescents not thinking through the consequences could come up with. Dave realizes how bizarre the plan was, but his realization comes too late. This quote also emphasizes the power of Mark’s persuasion.

“It was a strange situation finding herself on top for a change, being held up to the boys as an example to follow. Normally she would have been delighted. Today she felt ashamed and sickened. If they knew—if they had any idea—what sort of person I really am, she thought miserably, they would never, any of them, want anything to do with me again.”

Susan’s guilt over Mr. Griffin’s death is heightened by her family life. Susan is known to be an honest and kind girl, but she rarely feels self-confident. Now that she sees her brothers looking up to her, she realizes that in succumbing to peer pressure, she’s given up the part of herself that makes her a role model. Susan struggles to understand who she is after Mr. Griffin’s death.

“And when Mark told you something, you did it. She could understand now what David had meant when he had told her, ‘Mark isn’t like other people.’ There was a strength in Mark, an ability to know exactly what to do in any emergency, and when Mark said something, you had to believe it, because if you couldn’t believe in Mark, you couldn’t believe in anything.”

Part of the seduction of Mark is that he exudes an air of confidence in emergency situations. While most teenagers don’t have the life experiences to help them navigate an emergency, Mark is characterized by his calm demeanor. He convinces his peers that he is someone they can rely on, the way they would with a parent. Notably, the others believe that believing in Mark is fundamental.

“‘It has to be done,’ Mark had said, and it was true, and ‘He doesn’t know the difference,’ and that was true also. If the words the Reverend Chandler spoke from the pulpit were correct the body they had come to bury was no more than the deserted shell of the man. Somewhere, even now, the soul of Brian Griffin soared high and free into eternal glory, the anguish of his last hours on earth of no more significance in retrospect than the discomfort of his birth.”

Duncan demonstrates how the teens reason away their culpability in Brian Griffin’s death. Dave tries to rely on the lesson from church that explored corporeality. This quote highlights that the situation is so difficult to deal with that Dave tries to find logic in the idea that Mr. Griffin’s corpse is simply a body, thereby allowing him to try to move past his guilt. This line of reasoning is farcical, emphasizing Dave’s youth and the severity of his situation.

“I am not Susan anymore, she thought. I am not the person they know as their daughter and their sister. I am a stranger who has lived through things they could not even imagine and who has changed into someone foreign to them all. They look at me and call me ‘Sue,’ and I speak back to them, and they never guess how far away from them I am and how much I miss them.”

Susan’s inner consciousness is the only real demonstration of understanding of the severity of what has happened. Susan has become divorced from the person she thought she was. She takes accountability for her own changes by realizing that she’s caused her own trauma by participating in and lying about Mr. Griffin’s kidnapping and death. She is characterized by her trauma and her dissociation with identity.

“They’d never believe us. We’ve waited too long. Maybe you were right in the first place when you wanted to go to your father. If we’d gone in right after it happened we might have been believed. But not now. My god, Sue, we buried him! We dug a hole and put him in the ground. Innocent people wouldn’t have done that, would they?”

This quote marks a recognition that the teens are past the point of no return in their perception. It’s too late to save Mr. Griffin but it’s not too late to take responsibility and help Mr. Griffin’s widow find closure. This quote features Dave’s recognition that they won’t be perceived as innocent because they are not. This will lead to more anxiety, apprehension, guilt, and criminality.

“There was something—the name of somebody—that meant something to me. I remember having a feeling of recognition when I heard it. I started to tell them, and then I couldn’t remember any longer what it was I was going to say.”

This quote foreshadows the resolution of suspicions surrounding Mr. Griffin’s death. Cathy’s grief temporarily prevents her from putting the pieces of the puzzle together,. This quote foreshadows the future reckoning for the teens.

“Although she dreamed often of solitude, she had seldom actually experienced it. With the comings and goings of a large family, the McConnell house was seldom empty and almost never silent. Tonight its absolute stillness, accentuated by the moan of the wind outside, was oppressive and almost frightening.”

Susan’s dreams of a solitary life in a lakeside cabin turn into a nightmare. She discovers silence as damning of her guilt and highlighting her loneliness. Susan has made her isolation worse through her culpability in Mr. Griffin’s death. This quote emphasizes the shifting of Susan’s dreams based on her new, formative life experiences.

“…lying where she was, she could see the cracks beginning and running in sudden explosive lines away from the window, and then darkening until they looked like sections in a cake that had been placed in the oven and forgotten.”

The cracks in the foundation of Susan’s home due to Mark’s fire is symbolic of Susan’s internal conflict. Just as Mark literally sets fire to Susan’s home, Mark has also set a metaphorical fire to Susan’s sense of self. The cracks in Susan’s roof are a symbolic parallel to the cracks in Susan’s identity.

“I’m going to die, she screamed to the woman in the window. You’re glad, aren’t you? What else can you be but glad? Cathy Griffin looked straight at her, and her eyes held no hatred. They were gentle, sad, accepting eyes. I would never wish that upon you, the eyes said.”

The moment in which Cathy saves Susan is a fitting plot twist. Cathy redeems her husband’s kind spirit by saving his student. Cathy also fixes many wrongs by saving the girl who helped contribute to her husband’s murder. Cathy’s forgiveness is an important moment because it foreshadows Susan’s permission to heal and move forward with her life.

“‘You don’t have to have something “wrong with you” to need help in understanding things,’ Mrs. McConnell said.”

Mrs. McConnell’s fortitude foreshadows the hope that Susan will recover from this dark time in her life. Susan didn’t know how to ask for help when she needed it, and now her mother demonstrates how to ask for help even when nothing is wrong. This level of support highlights the goodness at the core of Susan’s upbringing. This quote is also a message from Duncan to her young readers encouraging them to seek help when they need help understanding things.

“This individual has a behavior pattern that brings him repeatedly into conflict with society. He is incapable of significant loyalty to individuals, groups or social values. He is selfish, callous, irresponsible, impulsive and totally unable to experience guilt. His frustration level is low; he cannot stand to be thwarted. He tends to blame others or offer plausible rationalizations for his behavior.”

This quote characterizes Mark for what he truly is: psychopathic. For most of the novel, Mark’s darkness is characterized in juxtaposition with his persuasive power over people. Duncan reveals the depths of Mark’s true character and explains why the other teenagers were so willing to go along with everything Mark said.

“We’re in this together, aren’t we? Whatever happens to you happens to all of us. Perhaps we’ll grow closer through this, somehow. Perhaps we’ll all understand each other better. There must have been something lacking in our life together if you needed someone like Mark to fill in the gap.”

This quote emphasizes the reason why so many teenagers succumb to peer pressure: so they can win their approval. Susan’s mother recognizes that Susan needs more unity and more confidence, and that rather than get that confidence from Mark, Susan can get that from her family. This quote further characterizes Susan’s family life as stable and supportive, providing hope for Susan’s future.