Summary

Solnit writes in this essay about the Isla Vista Massacre in California which took place on May 23, 2014. A young man, who, as he explained in an autobiography he posted, felt resentment towards women for not liking him, went on a shooting rampage which left 14 people injured and seven people dead, including himself. Solnit examines this case and disavows the notion that the shooter can be understood simply as mentally ill; she finds him to be “exceptionally susceptible to the madness of the society around him,” absorbing the many destructive messages which American society projects upon him – and everyone else (98). She gleans three of these unhealthy and even self-destructive obsessions, from what he wrote: wealth, admiration, and sexual success.

Moreover, he was taken with the characteristically American obsession with guns as a symbol of power. Feeling that attractive girls looked down...