Nineteen Minutes

by

Jodi Picoult

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Themes and Colors
Victims vs. Perpetrators Theme Icon
Vengeance vs. Justice Theme Icon
Expectations and the Failures of Family Theme Icon
Lost Innocence Theme Icon
Appearances vs. Reality Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nineteen Minutes, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Victims vs. Perpetrators

By depicting a main character, Peter Houghton, who is severely bullied and goes on to kill 10 people at his high school, Nineteen Minutes explores the often blurred line between victim and perpetrator. One of the key questions the novel asks is whether Peter’s history of being victimized by others mitigates his responsibility for his crime. The same question applies to Josie Cormier, another student at Peter’s school who shoots her abusive boyfriend…

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Vengeance vs. Justice

Nineteen Minutes is a story of revenge: it depicts a teenager, Peter Houghton, who murders 10 students at his school in a shooting spree after a lifetime of bullying. The book makes a strong case that vengeance isn’t effective because, although it might superficially appear to bring about justice, this isn’t how things usually work out in the end. The result of Peter’s act of vengeance is that innocent lives are lost, the underlying…

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Expectations and the Failures of Family

Nineteen Minutes is full of characters who have been misunderstood, let down, and actively harmed by their families. Indeed, because the novel focuses on the many problems faced by teenagers, it is especially attentive to the ways in which parents fail their children, particularly during the middle and high school years. Alarmingly, the novel shows that families fail even when they are full of love; one of the story’s key messages is that love is…

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Lost Innocence

As a novel that depicts the terrible things teenagers endure and do to each other, Nineteen Minutes is concerned with the idea of lost innocence. This is theme primarily explored through Peter, who as a result of bullying (as well as other issues, from romantic rejection to violent video games) transforms from an innocent child into a mass murderer. It is also explored through Josie, who is a similarly sweet and innocent child…

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Appearances vs. Reality

As a novel that depicts the cruel realities of the high school social world, Nineteen Minutes considers the (often huge) gulf between appearances and reality. Nearly every character in the novel feels pressured to have an outward appearance of happiness, success, and popularity. Yet even for the characters who have the most convincing outward appearance, this belies a much darker reality. The novel’s exploration of this theme is rather bleak, suggesting that the demand to…

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