Was Everyone Guilty? *Spoilers*

[avidgamer77]

During the Stray Dog chapter where everyone except Jennifer met their fate, do you think everyone deserves to be blamed for their comeuppance? Here's my thoughts:

Jennifer: for not fully understanding Wendy's feelings and breaking their oath, for loving Brown more than Wendy, for being unable to come to terms with her cowardice and channelling her aggression into the one she's supposed to love most, for taking a relationship for granted.

Wendy: for believing Jennifer will love her for eternity like in fairytale stories, for hoping her loneliness will be cured by someone she thinks is worth rescuing, for putting Jennifer into misery by surreptitiously humiliating and making the other children/adults hate her so that she can have all of Jennifer's love to herself (even if it means killing Brown), for filling her heart with rage and revenge because everyone no longer believed and respected her, for torturing Gregory psychologically and physically in order to make him a killer, for believing she can attain anything she wants as a greedy leader/lover so she can have all the attention.

Gregory: for being unable to accept Joshua's death and living in his own contradictions, for submitting to Wendy whom he thinks is Joshua (or any child under Joshua's dress) and doing anything under her orders including murder, for having a weak willpower to move on with life.

The orphans: for believing in the Artistocrat Club and its "games", for not believing in Wendy's myths, for ridiculing/betraying the former leader whom they always rely on, for switching their preference to Jennifer as the leader whom they knew would never be as reliable as Wendy (which would only make Wendy more resentful), for making Jennifer lonely and sad to the point that she had to confide in an animal.


It's like a chain reaction, isn't it?

[PrincessJennifer]

I don't really think Gregory is guilty, and I'm not just saying that because he's my favorite character. It's not really fair to blame him for not being able to accept Joshua's death, as that's not really something he could control. And while he did murder the orphans, he was not even himself anymore, thanks to Wendy's torture. Unlike all the others, I don't think he was even aware what he was doing at the time, only snapping out of it when Wendy was dead and he saw Jennifer.

[laura]

If anything Gregory should be to blame more than the others, because they are children . it's normal for them to make mistakes. Even worse is that the adults abandoned them and never took care of them properly. Gregory's son has been dead for at least almost a year, that's more than enough time to move on with his life. Instead he gave up and went insane, and Wendy found herself with someone willing to kill children. I like Gregory but it's not like Wendy could seriously have done anything without him. The real blame is that Hoffman and co. ran off, when the murder wouldn't have happened if they stayed.

[PrincessJennifer]

Perhaps that would have been more than enough time, but he never really got the chance, did he? Soon after losing Joshua, he found Jennifer, which fueled his delusion. When she left, he had to go through the pain of losing his son AGAIN. And before he could even get over that, Wendy showed up as Joshua to manipulate him. He may have been an adult, but he was completely taken advantage of. I do not believe Gregory could have ever hurt a child prior to Wendy's physical and mental torture, which went on for months. By the time she was done with him, he did not even know he was human anymore, let alone an adult. And even if the other adults had stayed, I believe the massacre still would have happened.

[laura]

true that. If the adults had stayed, I wonder if they may have been able to help some of the children escape though. Or if the presence of adults may have had any effect, since the children wouldn't be in the classroom at that time of night and thus have seen Wendy with Stray Dog.

[PrincessJennifer]

I made a topic about it over in Theories, so we can discuss it there, so this thread remains on-topic.

[avidgamer77]

Gregory is an innocent man, but he did play a part in the tragedy. If he had not tried to evade reality by perpetually convincing himself that Joshua is alive, which is further compounded by his alcoholism and drugs, then the massacre wouldn't have happened. He couldn't come to terms with reality and its bleakness. He wants to live an ideal life of everlasting bliss, and must have high expectations of himself in the past, judging from the many books and trophies he had kept. But because his wife left him, he wants to escape his past and reality by living in isolation and writing his own stories that also please his son. It's Joshua who has given him the willpower to live on, but Gregory should know he will eventually succumb to his terminal illness.

[PrincessJennifer]

But was he really trying to avoid reality? We cannot control how our mind works all the time. When suffering the grief of losing someone precious, especially a child and the only person you have left in your life, it's not uncommon to temporarily go into denial. Like I stated above, possible Gregory would have been able to get through this, but he never really got a chance to, with finding Jennifer so soon after Joshua's death and all the things that happened afterwords. We only know that he lost his wife-she may have simply died, rather than having left him willingly. And his living in isolation could be just because of his proffesion, as in old times, farmers did tend to live out in the middle of nowhere, just as his stories could be a means to entertain Joshua without spending money. We also do not know that he was aware Joshua was dying at all, as his diary hints he believes him to simply be sick. I also doubt Gregory believing in an everlasting bliss, especially after listening to him unable to write a story and saying there is no such thing as everlasting love in the final chapter. I would compare him to Eleanor in this respect. He wanted everlasting happiness-don't we all?,-but just like her, did not truly believe such a thing existed.