Amy answers “Ok it seems pretty clear that Kevin poured...”

Toot Renoos asked this question about We Need to Talk About Kevin:

Ok it seems pretty clear that Kevin poured the Drano into his sister's eye, but at our book club last night there was a heated discussion about Cecilia. The group was split on these two issues 1) was she simply slow, developmental not where she should have been or 2) was she so tortured by Kevin that like an abused child will not point the figure at him. Did he treatment account for her unnatural fears?

Amy It is my firm conviction that there was nothing wrong with either child, it was the mother who had something wrong with her. Here is my theory on this…moreIt is my firm conviction that there was nothing wrong with either child, it was the mother who had something wrong with her. Here is my theory on this, and my reasoning. Some of the views I express here may be quite unpopular with some people.

Eva treated Kevin badly from birth and conditioned him to hate her and to behave the way he did, and when Celia was born, she conditioned her to be needy and scared of everything.

Children are NOT inherently bad from birth. Kevin definitely had some behavioural problems (possibly ADHD or an Autistic Spectrum disorder) but that could have been due to the foetal alcohol syndrome he developed due to his mother's drinking when he was in the womb.

There was no way of Kevin being so calculated as a child, to the point of being portrayed as evil because children simply do not think that way. His mother projected all his 'bad behaviour' onto him and in time he began to behave the way she expected him to, and likewise with Celia, who was mollycoddled by her mother from the day she was born.

Celia's unnatural fears were not caused by Kevin. They were caused by her mother. Celia saw how her mother treated Kevin and was afraid that if she did not continue to cling to her mother the way she did, her mother would begin to treat her the same way.

The incident with the acid could well have been a childish plan cooked up by Celia herself to try and get their mother to treat them both the same way by persuading her that Celia is also badly behaved for playing with the drain cleaner fluid, and the plan backfired as she got it in her eye by accident. This explains her reluctance to point the finger at Kevin, because it wasn't actually his fault. He is likely to have gone along with Celia's plan in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to get his mother to see that both children are the same and should be treated as such.

It's actually really surprising how many of these answers are siding with the mother. Eva was the evil one in this novel. She is a VERY unreliable narrator and definitely has some kind of mental health issue. Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy comes to mind here, where parents project certain behavioural traits onto their children for various reasons (the actual syndrome pertains to illness and diseases).

Reading this novel put me in mind of Dave Pelzer's 'A Child Called It' although that is from the point of view of the mistreated child and not the mother who is convinced her child is bad and evil. Eva broke Kevin's arm once, who knows what else she did to him. She may well have caused his 'illness' when he was 10 that confined him to his bed and could have killed him. Maybe she poisoned him? She (as the narrator) is definitely not going to admit that to the reader so it's up to us to judge.

I believe that is the author's aim though - to present us with a one-sided ambiguous story and leave it up to us to judge. (less)

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Nikki Callahan This isn't even slightly accurate, did you even pay attention? She never drank with Kevin's pregnancy. She drank some with Celia. Kevin abused and inj ...more
Aug 18, 2023 10:56PM · flag

Savannah The general consensus in psychology is that psychopaths are born
Feb 21, 2024 06:15PM · flag

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We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver (Goodreads Author)

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