A storyteller is someone who tries to explain something he hasn't understood himself?

Maybe you know the feeling of having written a story, or perhaps you only told it to a friend - but they don't agree with you. You make a big effort to tell someone how things are, how they work, but you only earn
a doubtful smile.

That's not a catastrophe. Some storytellers have made the school killings of the last decades their topic.
There you can find several attempts to blame other people for the killings, not the killers themselves.
Some said, it was because of the mobbing. Some said, it was because of the unfair teachers. Some said, it was because of the dominance of special groups at school, e.g. sport teams. Some said, it was because of bad family and life conditions at home.

All these reasons are true, of course. They all play a role, and they can impress a young man of 16 or 18 or 20 quite hard. It is not easy to try being one of those young killers, to imagine their feelings, their experience, their complex situation.

But what kind of excuse is that? Is it reasonable to add up such elements and then come to the conclusion that it was something like logical or 'normal' that they made a school killing? How many young people in the US or in Germany have such experience, the same problems, and the same life conditions? Do they all make school killings? How do they manage their problems? Why do millions of others in the same situation not kill other students or teachers? Is there possibly some kind of concept to prevent them from criminal action, a concept that they can and do set up and practice themselves?

I've made a little attempt to look for a way out, when a deeply disappointed student is obviously planning a harsh attack at his school. It is in my story 'Mike's Plan', the first one in my 'School Stories'.

Henry Arnold, author of School Stories