Grief

One purpose of the novel is to accurately portray the intricacies of grief as a complex emotion. Grief drives most of the actions of the characters and the tone of the prose, affecting every aspect of the story. The author uses this pervasiveness to create a parallel with the way that grief consumes a person in mourning. Though its potency may fade and swell under certain circumstances, the grief lasts.

Beginning with the deaths of the students and faculty killed in the school shooting and continuing with the deaths of the families of those students, the surviving characters are given much to grieve over throughout the course of the book. Not only do the four juniors on the yearbook staff have to mourn the loss of community members, they must also grieve the abrupt loss of their childhoods. The lives of every member of the community...