Who Are The Main Characters In Columbine Novel?

I’ve recommended 'Columbine' a few times to people trying to understand the event beyond headlines, and I usually start by naming Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as the central figures. The book revolves around them, but it intentionally widens the lens: secondary characters include survivors, classmates like Brooks Brown, families of the victims, school staff, and the law enforcement officers who responded. Together they create a mosaic rather than a simple cast list.

One of the things I keep thinking about is how the book treats myth versus reality—characters like Cassie Bernall become symbolic in public memory, but the author interrogates those symbols, showing how rumor reshaped the story of real people. That tension between individual lives and collective narrative is what makes the characters linger in my mind; it’s less about villains and heroes and more about how communities try to make sense of unfathomable events, which I find quietly sobering.

I picked up 'Columbine' wanting names and clear villains, and the book gives you both—and then complicates them. The obvious main players are Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; they’re the architects of the event the whole book orbits around. Cullen examines their home lives, online writings, school experiences, and friendships to trace how their personalities and choices diverged and overlapped.

On the flip side, the narrative treats the victims and survivors as essential characters, not just background. Brooks Brown, some classmates, parents, and the investigators who chased leads appear repeatedly; their testimonies and emotions shape how the story reads. There’s also social context as a kind of character—the media, community myths, and the way blame and meaning spread after the shooting. That broader cast is what turns a factual account into a deeply human (and heartbreaking) portrait. I came away thinking the strength of the book is how it refuses to let any single person be a one-dimensional figure.

Opening 'Columbine' felt like stepping into a meticulously rebuilt scene—except the two people at the heart of that scene are the ones you’re both trying to understand and, frankly, can’t stop staring at. For most readers the central figures are Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold: their personalities, their relationship, and the psychology that led to the massacre are the spine of the book. Cullen (if you read his version) lays out Eric’s calculated, sociopathic tendencies against Dylan’s depressive, self-loathing mindset, and that contrast is what makes the narrative almost novelistic.

Beyond those two, the book gives breathing room to survivors, victims, families, and the town itself. People like Brooks Brown (a survivor who later spoke publicly), the grieving families, and the investigators who tried to piece the timeline together all function as secondary protagonists. Cullen also spends a lot of time dismantling myths—the so-called 'Trenchcoat Mafia', the martyr stories about students like Cassie Bernall—and shows how media and rumor shaped public perception.

If you want characters to root for, you’ll find them in the survivors and the ordinary kids whose lives were shattered; if you want to understand motivation, Eric and Dylan are the darkly magnetic focus. Personally, the way the book treats real people with care left me quietly unsettled but grateful for the clarity it brings.

A quieter, more personal take: reading 'Columbine' felt like listening to a long conversation where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are the two voices you can’t stop analyzing. The book foregrounds them—Eric’s manipulative, grandiose streak versus Dylan’s more tortured, remorseful tone—and then pulls back to show how their classmates, teachers, and families factor into everything. That’s why I kept pausing: the author isn’t just chronicling events, he’s building character studies.

What stuck with me were the smaller, deeply human presences—survivors whose short sketches in the text become anchors, the parents whose grief changes the moral landscape, and the investigators who try to stitch together motive from Fragments. Cullen also spends time demolishing popular myths—stories about students who supposedly died saying certain things, or the idea of a neatly defined 'gang'—which altered how the community processed the tragedy. For me, the most affecting aspect was how ordinary people—friends, teachers, first responders—turn into the unsung main players of a story that could have been all about notoriety. That nuance has stayed with me long after I closed the book.