Killing Mr. Griffin

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1978

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Susceptibility of Peer Pressure

In Killing Mr. Griffin, Duncan explores the susceptibility of peer pressure among young people struggling to find themselves. This theme is important as a trope of young adult fiction because issues of peer pressure are relatable for young readers.

The most prevalent example of this theme is Susan’s struggle with peer pressure. Susan is identified by her loneliness and her outsider status. She feels self-conscious about her awkward looks, and her aptitude for academics gives her a nerdy perception at school. She is lonely and friendless. These internal conflicts make Susan ripe for being taken advantage of. Betsy introduces the idea of bringing Susan into the plan to kidnap Mr. Griffin because Betsy knows that Susan has a crush on Dave. By dangling Dave as a potential boyfriend, Betsy is confident that Susan will succumb to peer pressure. Susan is taken off guard when Betsy, Jeff, Dave, and Mark invite her out to a picnic to convince Susan to participate in the kidnapping plan. Susan quickly agrees to the plan despite her reservations because she can’t pass up on the opportunity to grow closer to other people. This susceptibility to peer pressure ends up ruining Susan’s sense of self and placing her in physical and emotional danger. Through Susan’s narrative, Duncan warns her readers of the consequences of peer pressure.

Jeff, Dave, and Betsy are also victims of peer pressure because they are easily influenced by Mark’s sociopathic but convincing personality. Jeff, Dave, and Betsy don’t want to challenge Mark because they would also challenge one another and the group’s unity over a dark secret. Their friendships are founded on secrets, lies, and murder. And yet, they protect these friendships because letting go means sacrificing themselves. Mark exhibits many signs of a psychopath, but Jeff, Dave, and Betsy ignore these signs to hold on to social survival. They don’t question Mark’s plans because they need someone to be the person who runs the show. They don’t believe in themselves, so they project their desire for stability onto Mark. Mark manipulates their emotions, employing peer pressure to keep them under his thumb and within his web of power and influence.

Duncan explores how peer pressure destroys the individual by dehumanizing individual qualities and forcing people into situations they would rather avoid. In a world marked by popularity and loneliness, no one wants to be singled out or ignored. The power of peer pressure as a method of influence and control is fundamental to the narrative development in this novel.

The Lines Between Good and Evil

In Killing Mr. Griffin, Duncan reveals that the lines between good and evil can often be skewed. Mark symbolizes evil. Mark is the ideal antagonist because he is manipulative, unempathetic, and completely without remorse. Mark is a serial killer whose murders are committed out of his own struggle for power. He burns his father to death because his father caught him forging checks and refused to pay off his debts. To prove he could dominate his father, he killed him. Mark does the same thing to Mr. Griffin. Mr. Griffin flexes power over his students, so Mark reclaims that power by kidnapping Mr. Griffin and leaving him outside to die. Because Mark kills out of an egotistical thirst for dominance, his antagonism is based on dehumanizing others. Mark doesn’t feel remorse or guilt for his actions. He genuinely believes that he is smarter and better than other people. His superiority complex makes him dismissive of the value of human life. Therefore, Mark’s antagonism is a portrayal of human evil. His intentions, manipulations, and carefully curated exterior present him as irredeemable.

In juxtaposition with Mark, Susan balances between good and evil, ultimately proving her goodness. Though she is indirectly involved in Mr. Griffin’s death, Susan’s dishonesty after the fact is what taints her morality. Rather than tell the truth and provide closure to Cathy Griffin, Susan lies about Mr. Griffin’s behavior the day of his disappearance. Susan is actively self-conscious of her guilt in the case and is constantly torn between keeping up her lies and feeling an impulse to reveal the truth to adults. Susan is ultimately redeemed by this quality. Though she does bad things, she is not an evil person. Susan’s family’s support of her and their encouragement that she confront the truth implies that there is hope for Susan to move away from the bad things she’s done and reclaim the good person she truly is.

Betsy is another character who is irredeemably evil. Though Betsy is not psychopathic like Mark, she is seduced by violence and doesn’t express guilt at any point in the novel. She is fine leaving Susan tied up in a house alone with Mark, highlighting how little Betsy cares for other people. Betsy is motivated by a superficial and selfish desire to be admired by everyone, particularly males. Betsy uses her exterior of being cute and popular as a disguise for her internal corruption. Betsy doesn’t care about other peoples’ feelings and is only concerned with earning attention.

Killing Mr. Griffin highlights characters who do bad things, but they are not necessarily all evil. Given their youth and relative susceptibility to making poor decisions, Duncan uses teenage characters to portray the message that the lines between good and evil can often be gray.

Skewed Sense of Justice

The title of the novel immediately introduces tension to the novel. Inherent in this tension is the skewed sense of justice within the adolescent mind. There is a certain power imbalance in the teacher-student relationship: While teenagers are developing autonomous ways of being in the world, they are still living under the restrictions of life structured by adults. The power given to teachers is a societal agreement and there is little inherent in that power differential. Therefore, when Mr. Griffin exerts his power, his students believe him to be overly unjust. The concept of justice is important, because although the students get carried away in a dangerous plan that ultimately takes Mr. Griffin’s life, their feelings of injustice are relevant to their character development.

Dave and Jeff go along with the plan to kidnap Mr. Griffin out of a skewed sense of justice. They believe that they can even the power differential by intimidating Mr. Griffin. However, justice is not using violence to enact revenge, which is what the kidnapping plan entails. Dave and Jeff are impulsive in their agreement with Mark to kidnap Mr. Griffin. They believe that the kidnapping can even their playing field, without thinking through the consequences of their actions. It is unjust and abusive to kidnap Mr. Griffin, and his death proves that there was nothing equitable about their plan for justice in the first place. It is true that Mr. Griffin is tough on his students and that he causes a great deal of stress and pressure in his classroom. But it is also true that combatting a strict teacher by kidnapping and killing him is a disproportionate reaction and a miscarriage of justice. The injustice of this situation is tied to the fact that Jeff and Dave assume that Mr. Griffin doesn’t respect them and is strict to make their life more miserable. The misperception that Mr. Griffin is antagonist develops an overemotional approach to how to deal with their conflict with Mr. Griffin’s class.

There is also a skewing of justice in the ways that the teenagers try to rationalize Mr. Griffin’s death. They make excuses to one another and to themselves to alleviate their guilt. They comfort themselves with the idea that Mr. Griffin died because of his health problem with angina, not because of their actions. However, their desertion of Mr. Griffin and refusal to give him his pills killed Mr. Griffin. In the aftermath of his death, the teenagers try to make sense of his death without acknowledging their responsibility. The lack of accountability highlights that these teenagers don’t understand what justice truly is.

Ultimately, justice is served. Mark is charged with three accounts of murder, while the others are charged with second-degree murder or manslaughter. Throughout the novel, Duncan uses foreshadowing and implications to set up the consequences of the teens’ actions.