Hey Nostradamus!
Encyclopedia
Hey Nostradamus! is a novel
by Douglas Coupland
centred around a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver
, British Columbia
and its aftermath. This is Coupland's most critically acclaimed novel. It was first published by Random House of Canada
in 2003
. The novel comprises four first-person narrative
s, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love
, sex
, religion
, prayer
and grief
.
. Cheryl, from a purgatorial ante-state, recounts the events that led up to the shooting, involving her secret trip to Las Vegas to marry her boyfriend Jason. She also describes with a first person perspective what was happening in the cafeteria while the school shooting was taking place.
Cheryl describes her relationship to God, her relationship to her group of religious minded friends and their "Youth Alive!" group, and her relationship to her husband, Jason. She speaks about her life with a frank, open nature, not afraid of anything, as she is beyond the grave.
We also listen in to the prayers of people still in the incident and of those thinking about the incident. It is explained that only prayers and curses can carry through to the afterlife. The text indents the prayers in the section, presenting them without interaction with Cheryl's character, as stand-alone external perceptions of the incident.
During the shooting, Cheryl was trapped under a table at the center of the cafeteria. While the killers were making their way through the crowd, one of them decides that he has had enough with the killing, and wants to stop. The other killers decide that he has become weak, and kill him. They then turn their attention to Cheryl and her friends, and Cheryl becomes the final casualty.
Discovered thus by the police, Jason is initially treated as a suspect: an additional level of tragedy for Jason, further intensified by the mainstream media's sensationalistic exploitation of this mistake. As a result of this irresponsible treatment of the events by corporate media, the families in the school, including Cheryl's parents, believe Jason guilty and variously shun and abuse him.
The media then further misrepresent Jason by reporting, without research, that Jason had been seen before the shooting roughing up an accusatory Youth Alive! member over alleged impropriety in his relationship with Cheryl, whom Jason had in fact privately married in a Las Vegas chapel.
When Jason arrives home from the shooting incident, the RCMP talk to Jason’s parents. They tell them that Jason is a hero for taking out one of the killers. His father, however, does not see this. Reg has an excessively legalistic Christianity, and he reacts to the news that his son has taken a life with an extreme literalism and a confusingly condescending reaction. Jason’s mother, in this moment, breaks down, and attacks and seriously wounds her husband Reg which damages their relationship to the point of irreparability.
In the letter, forming this section of the book, Jason details the enduring and corrosive effects on his state of mind caused by his frenzied mistreatment by the media, and his dogged attempts to restore himself. He further details the pain caused by his father's openly preferential treatment of elder brother Kent, a leader in the Youth Alive! movement: pain intensified by Kent's early death and the attendant loss of opportunity for reconciliation.
Jason’s story continues from this beginning, as he tries to come to terms with the facts that life has presented him. He enters into a dark world very different from where he expects to see himself. He experiences several moments of black-out near the end of his letter, becoming disoriented and lost. However, Jason is presented with another chance to kill, again in self-defense, but he restrains himself. This choice of life over death provides him with a kind of redemption.
The secondary plot movement of the part involves the death of Kent. Kent`s memorial is a scene of a large fight between Kent’s widow, Barb, and Reg. The fight is based over whether or not twins both have souls. Reg says that one twin would be without a soul, which to Barb, the mother of twins, is appalled. This sends Reg into another dark spiral. Reg ends up at one point in the hospital, and only Jason goes to visit him there.
In a vain search for Jason, Heather is befriended by a con-artist named Allison who fraudulently presents herself to Heather as a psychic in order to extort money in exchange for (false) news of Jason. Allison provides Heather with information that only Jason would have. Jason and Heather's relationship began in a Toys "R" Us, with Jason purchasing toys for his nephews. Jason and Heather begin to create their own characters and stories for their characters, which is the information provided by Allison back to Heather.
Heather also talks about her relationship to Reg, who is undergoing fundamental changes due to the loss of both of his children. Heather’s interactions with Reg bring Reg back to a more humane Christianity, while bringing Heather to consider faith, where she had hitherto been staunchly against it.
He is writing a letter to Jason which he is going to post on the trees around the forest, hoping his son reads the letter, realises that his father has undergone a transformation, and comes home to him. The section, which climactically ends the book, is a paean of exultation.
Jason
Reg
Jason’s mother
Kent
Barb
Heather
The quotation from Corinthians that opens the novel was found on a gravestone of one of the children who died in a high school shooting.
The novel was released the same week as Gus Van Sant
’s film Elephant, which also dealt with a Columbine-like situation.
Coupland also had an art installation on the same topic, called “Tropical Birds” which featured 3D versions of the kneeling figure from the front cover of Hey Nostradamus!, and other pieces which features scenes from a school shooting tragedy.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...
centred around a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
and its aftermath. This is Coupland's most critically acclaimed novel. It was first published by Random House of Canada
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
in 2003
2003 in literature
The year 2003 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Peter Ackroyd - The Clerkenwell Tales*Atsuko Asano - No...
. The novel comprises four first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
s, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
, sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
and grief
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
.
Plot synopsis
The novel follows the stories of victims of a fictional school shooting in North Vancouver in 1988. Coupland has expressed his concern that the killers of the Columbine received more focus than the victims; this is his story about the victims of tragedy. The novel is told in four parts, each with a different narrator and focus.1988: Cheryl
This part of the book is told post-mortem by Cheryl, a girl killed in the fictional school shooting at Delbrook Senior SecondaryDelbrook Senior Secondary School
Delbrook Senior Secondary was a public high school from 1957 to 1977 in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, part of School District 44 North Vancouver.- History :...
. Cheryl, from a purgatorial ante-state, recounts the events that led up to the shooting, involving her secret trip to Las Vegas to marry her boyfriend Jason. She also describes with a first person perspective what was happening in the cafeteria while the school shooting was taking place.
Cheryl describes her relationship to God, her relationship to her group of religious minded friends and their "Youth Alive!" group, and her relationship to her husband, Jason. She speaks about her life with a frank, open nature, not afraid of anything, as she is beyond the grave.
We also listen in to the prayers of people still in the incident and of those thinking about the incident. It is explained that only prayers and curses can carry through to the afterlife. The text indents the prayers in the section, presenting them without interaction with Cheryl's character, as stand-alone external perceptions of the incident.
During the shooting, Cheryl was trapped under a table at the center of the cafeteria. While the killers were making their way through the crowd, one of them decides that he has had enough with the killing, and wants to stop. The other killers decide that he has become weak, and kill him. They then turn their attention to Cheryl and her friends, and Cheryl becomes the final casualty.
1999: Jason
This section is a letter from Jason to his two nephews. We learn about what happened to Jason during and after the shooting at Delbrook. During the killing, Jason sees the killers running rampant, and finds a river-rock in a planter and after the one killer's turn of conscience, Jason throws the rock, killing one of the shooters. However, he is too late to save Cheryl, who dies in his arms.Discovered thus by the police, Jason is initially treated as a suspect: an additional level of tragedy for Jason, further intensified by the mainstream media's sensationalistic exploitation of this mistake. As a result of this irresponsible treatment of the events by corporate media, the families in the school, including Cheryl's parents, believe Jason guilty and variously shun and abuse him.
The media then further misrepresent Jason by reporting, without research, that Jason had been seen before the shooting roughing up an accusatory Youth Alive! member over alleged impropriety in his relationship with Cheryl, whom Jason had in fact privately married in a Las Vegas chapel.
When Jason arrives home from the shooting incident, the RCMP talk to Jason’s parents. They tell them that Jason is a hero for taking out one of the killers. His father, however, does not see this. Reg has an excessively legalistic Christianity, and he reacts to the news that his son has taken a life with an extreme literalism and a confusingly condescending reaction. Jason’s mother, in this moment, breaks down, and attacks and seriously wounds her husband Reg which damages their relationship to the point of irreparability.
In the letter, forming this section of the book, Jason details the enduring and corrosive effects on his state of mind caused by his frenzied mistreatment by the media, and his dogged attempts to restore himself. He further details the pain caused by his father's openly preferential treatment of elder brother Kent, a leader in the Youth Alive! movement: pain intensified by Kent's early death and the attendant loss of opportunity for reconciliation.
Jason’s story continues from this beginning, as he tries to come to terms with the facts that life has presented him. He enters into a dark world very different from where he expects to see himself. He experiences several moments of black-out near the end of his letter, becoming disoriented and lost. However, Jason is presented with another chance to kill, again in self-defense, but he restrains himself. This choice of life over death provides him with a kind of redemption.
The secondary plot movement of the part involves the death of Kent. Kent`s memorial is a scene of a large fight between Kent’s widow, Barb, and Reg. The fight is based over whether or not twins both have souls. Reg says that one twin would be without a soul, which to Barb, the mother of twins, is appalled. This sends Reg into another dark spiral. Reg ends up at one point in the hospital, and only Jason goes to visit him there.
2002: Heather
This part of the novel is narrated by Heather, a woman with whom Jason has eventually been able to achieve trust and intimacy. Jason has now gone missing, and Heather is keeping a journal to remember and deal with her loss of him.In a vain search for Jason, Heather is befriended by a con-artist named Allison who fraudulently presents herself to Heather as a psychic in order to extort money in exchange for (false) news of Jason. Allison provides Heather with information that only Jason would have. Jason and Heather's relationship began in a Toys "R" Us, with Jason purchasing toys for his nephews. Jason and Heather begin to create their own characters and stories for their characters, which is the information provided by Allison back to Heather.
Heather also talks about her relationship to Reg, who is undergoing fundamental changes due to the loss of both of his children. Heather’s interactions with Reg bring Reg back to a more humane Christianity, while bringing Heather to consider faith, where she had hitherto been staunchly against it.
2003: Reg
Jason is still missing, and this part is narrated by Reg as a lament for his lost son. This section is told by Reg as an atonement for his previous actions as he has come to realize the faults in his particular belief system.He is writing a letter to Jason which he is going to post on the trees around the forest, hoping his son reads the letter, realises that his father has undergone a transformation, and comes home to him. The section, which climactically ends the book, is a paean of exultation.
Characters
Cheryl- Cheryl is the first narrator of the story. She is a young grade 12 student, who is a victim of the infamous Delbrook Secondary SchoolDelbrook Senior Secondary SchoolDelbrook Senior Secondary was a public high school from 1957 to 1977 in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, part of School District 44 North Vancouver.- History :...
massacre. Cheryl grew up in a non-religious environment but becomes religious, through her pursuit of Jason. Her family follows an agnostic mentality, and dislike Cheryl's newfound faith. Cheryl is the last fatality, before Jason storms in, and kills Mitchell with a blunt round object. Cheryl narrates between her former life, and oblivion. Jason and Cheryl wed in Las Vegas, using fake IDs purchased by Jason. She informs Jason that she is pregnant with his child, just a few hours before the massacre occurs.
Jason
- A quiet and rebellious child from a very religious family. Jason is the narrator of the second section of the novel. His father, Reg, is self-righteous, zealous, and unapologetic, and seems to favour his older brother Kent.
Reg
- Reg is the narrator of the fourth part of the novel. Born to a strict father, Reg turned to belief as his salvation. Creating a very strict religious code for himself, Reg married and became the father to two children, Kent and Jason. Kent was his father’s child, following in his father’s religious footsteps. Throughout the novel, Reg undergoes a transformation from narrow fundamentalist to a more open and loving human being.
Jason’s mother
- Jason’s mother married Reg when she thought she had found someone who believed in something. After Reg outcasts Jason, Jason’s mother leaves Reg, and takes Jason across Canada. She eventually succumbs to Alcohol-Induced Dementia.
Kent
- Jason’s older brother. He is a leader in the Youth Alive! movement, and looms over his brother as his father’s chosen son. Kent is married to Barb, and has two twin sons with her. He dies in the beginning of the second part from a car accident.
Barb
- Kent’s wife, but she is the mother of Jason’s twin sons, therefore Kent’s nephews. She and Kent tried to have kids but it didn't work. Since she was desperate to have kids, and Kent dies, she forces Jason to have kids with her. Since, she wanted her kids to look like they're Kent's and her child, so she has sex with Jason so that there are chances of her child looking like Kent. After a fallout with Reg, she remains close to Jason until his disappearance. She is a different person from Kent in many ways, and is very different after the death of Kent.
Heather
- Jason’s romantic partner in the latter half of the novel, Heather is the narrator of the third part of the novel. She is a woman who feels distant and is brought back into the world, just as she brings out Jason from his emotional seclusion. She creates characters and stories with Jason, which are later provided back to her by a psychic, who Heather believes will bring her back to the missing Jason.
Inspiration
Coupland began to write the novel in December, 2001, after a “nightmarish 40-city tour that began on 10 September”. This tour took him across the United States and allowed him to experience the “collective sorrow” of the United States. Coupland began to research the Columbine events after this experience.The quotation from Corinthians that opens the novel was found on a gravestone of one of the children who died in a high school shooting.
History of the novel
An international best selling novel, the novel was received well by critics.The novel was released the same week as Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
’s film Elephant, which also dealt with a Columbine-like situation.
Coupland also had an art installation on the same topic, called “Tropical Birds” which featured 3D versions of the kneeling figure from the front cover of Hey Nostradamus!, and other pieces which features scenes from a school shooting tragedy.
See also
- Columbine High School massacreColumbine High School massacreThe Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
- Delbrook Senior Secondary SchoolDelbrook Senior Secondary SchoolDelbrook Senior Secondary was a public high school from 1957 to 1977 in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, part of School District 44 North Vancouver.- History :...
External links
- Book review from The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...