Eva's "Two-Week Revelation"

On its inside cover, at the beginning of a pull quote taken from a review in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, We Need to Talk About Kevin is described as “A slow, magnetic descent into hell that is as fascinating as it is disturbing.”  This becomes especially true in Monday’s reading section, in which Eva moves into a home she absolutely detests (recall: “Franklin, the whole house was on Zoloft”), Kevin’s psychopathic behavior begins to crescendo, and Eva has another child, unassuming and tender Celia, about whom Eva remarks “from the moment his sister was born, Kevin Khatchadourian, figuratively at least, got away with murder” (113, 231).  The majority of this section is in keeping with the trajectory of the book, except for one part that I’m not quite sure – and, at this point, Eva is not quite sure – what to make of, and that is “the two weeks when [Kevin] got sick” (235).

Eva writes of this time period, “I cannot say whether we are less ourselves when we are sick, or more.  But I did find that remarkable two-week period a revelation” (236).  During his illness, Kevin undergoes a complete (albeit temporary) change of character.  He loses his hard edge with his mother and his sister, and exhibits an aversion to spending time with his father.  This causes Eva to entertain the thought that this state of being might, in fact, be the real Kevin, who is revealed when Kevin is too weak to put forth the “energy and commitment…to generate this other boy (or boys)” that make up his standard personality (236).  She also comes to realize that “underneath the levels of fury…lay a carpet of despair.  He wasn’t mad.  He was sad” (236).  In many ways, this section begins to throw into question everything the reader thinks he or she knows about Kevin.  Who is the “real” Kevin?  How does he really feel toward his mother?  If his callous-unemotional tendencies are fabricated to any extent, why?  What does he really think of his father?  Is he “evil” at heart, or is his evilness a symptom of something else?  What does this sadness, seen in him for the first time by his mother, mean?

At the risk of revealing too much (I’ve already completed the book), I will say only that I believe this to be one of the most important passages in the novel thus far, if for no other reason that this is our introduction to this “different” Kevin, and it is at this point that the true rising action to the climax begins.  This “two-week…revelation” of Eva’s is necessary to understanding Kevin as a person, in a novel where it is so easy to dismiss and quarantine him as a purely irredeemable figure.