We Need to Talk About Kevin: Chapter 4: December 2, 2000 Summary & Analysis

Before Eva meets Franklin, she imagines that she’ll end up marrying a thin, artsy European man.  Franklin is the opposite of the kind of person she imagines herself with. Franklin is big and has light features, he likes sports and junk food, he drives a pickup truck, and he’s a Republican. Eva is grateful that she married Franklin instead of the type of man she imagined. Franklin is also a patriot, and patriotism is a foreign concept to Eva when she first meets Franklin—Eva dislikes the U.S. and loves to travel.

When Eva and Franklin first meet, they quarrel playfully about the merit of the U.S. Franklin encourages Eva to further explore her own country, insisting that she go to a baseball game, eat McDonalds, and visit national parks rather than traveling abroad. Franklin argues that while America is a great nation right now, it won’t be that way forever. Eva, in the present, observes that Franklin’s attitude about the U.S. mirrors his attitude about children (before they ever had any)—he dismisses America’s issues just as he downplays the fact that some children “ha[ve] problems.” Eva thinks that Franklin doesn’t show her the true America—he shows her the version of the country that he constructs in his own mind.

When Eva is a young traveler, her friends in Europe think that Americans don’t understand irony, but Eva thinks that they’re wrong—that American culture in the 1980s is rife with irony. Franklin doesn’t appreciate irony even though he understands it. Eva thinks he is intelligent, sincere, and “naïve on purpose.” Franklin loves America unironically. He considers it a fair country that is rich and diverse in every way— culturally, politically, ethnically, and geographically. Franklin thinks the U.S. is the best country in which to raise a family. Eva eventually comes to agree, but she ultimately comes to believe that it is impossible to live a good life with a healthy family anywhere.

In the present, Eva writes to Franklin from a café. She informs him that she visits Kevin in prison every two weeks. Though Eva thinks she has many faults as a mother, she always “follow[s] the rules” of parenthood. Some community members accuse Eva of visiting Kevin so regularly just to show that she is not a negligent parent, but Eva is only trying to prove her merit as a mother to herself.

When Eva first visits Kevin in prison, he seems angry at her. Eva doesn’t understand this, but she later reasons that her presence makes Kevin feel guilty, and he expresses this as anger. Kevin and Eva barely speak during Eva’s first few visits—Eva is afraid of him. She once asks him what the other juvenile inmates think of him, and he replies that they admire him for being courageous enough to commit murder.

Kevin has now been in juvenile detention for a year and a half. Though he once reveled in the spotlight that his crime brought him, he now realizes that his fame is fading. During one of Eva’s visits, Kevin tells Eva about a grotesque murder his 13-year-old fellow inmate committed, and Eva responds with deadpan jokes. Eva thinks that responding this way will get Kevin to speak more. Kevin is jealous of the other teenager because everyone talks about his murder. When Eva leaves, Kevin tells her that he hates her. She responds that she frequently hates him, too.

Even though Eva criticizes American culture, she realizes that she does identify as an American and she always feels like a foreigner when she travels abroad. Even leaving the country and feeling confident that it will still be there, unchanged, when she returns marks Eva as American. Eva likes having an American partner because she and Franklin share the same cultural background. Franklin used to remind Eva of the feeling of being home, but Kevin has since taken that feeling from her. Because of Kevin, her community ostracizes Eva as if she doesn’t belong. Visiting Kevin in prison is the closest Eva comes to regaining the feeling of home.