Sympathy for the Devil

I have been feeling very, very empathetic towards Eva. I'm nineteen, I don't really want a kid right now, and I, currently, can't see myself ever wanting one. But biological clocks are crazy, so maybe I will one day. But since I don't want one right now, I can't help but sympathize and empathize with Eva because Kevin is basically the worst. Can we all agree that he's the worst?

When Eva goes to visit him and meets Loretta Greenleaf, in my opinion, the best quote of the book appears.

"'It's always the mother's fault, ain't it?' she said softly, collecting her coat. 'That boy turn out bad cause his mama a drunk, or a she a junkie. She let him run wild, she don't teach him right from wrong. She never home when he back from school.  Nobody ever say his daddy a drunk, or his daddy not home after school. And nobody ever say they some kids just damned mean. Don't you believe that old guff. Don't you let them saddle you with all that killing.'" (166)

And I fall down at her fictional feet because this is perfect.

I read through some of the other blog posts, some of which, to an extent, say "Kevin is sort of a psychopath, but Eva certainly didn't help the situation." I won't deny that despite what I personally feel towards Eva. I won't deny that throwing her son across the room was not the best move to make. But she felt remorse, and in her letter to her husband she says "I'd followed a devout regime of hugging my little boy an average of three times a day, admiring something he did or said at least twice, and reciting I love you, kiddo or You know that your Daddy and I love you very much with much the predictable uniformity of liturgical professions of faith" (195). All Eva does is try and for that I sympathize with her. I want to say that Shriver intends for that to happen because she could tell the story from someone else's point of view and it would be completely different. But Eva's incredibly self-aware, she calls her self a "rotten mother" (250), and she feels pride at Kevin when he begins a conversation on her thoughts about America (279). She is very aware that blame is going to fall on her, and while she does not necessarily accept the blame, writing that she didn't think that "the heaping [of blame] did them any good" (66), she's not ignorant of it. Loretta says, "Don't you let them saddle you with all that killing," and she's right. Ignoring whether or not Eva is a good mother, she doesn't deserve to be considered the root of Kevin's evil. I think Kevin was just "damned mean," and Franklin was the one who bought him the crossbow (280). Why should we focus on the mother when Franklin's seemingly intentional blindness towards Kevin's behavior isn't helping anyone?