Give a Boy a Gun Summary

Give A Boy A Gun BY: Todd Strasser

Give A Boy A Gun is about two high school students, Brendan Lawlor and Gary Searle. These two kids are the kids that are always in the back, don’t say much, and get picked on by the “popular kids”. They take this kind of bullying and punishment for about three years, and then they finally snap. Every day that they get picked on they get darker and darker. The story is told by the students of Middletown high, their high school, and is written as a bunch of interviews by the narrator, which ends up being revealed as Gary’s stepsister. After being picked on for years, and planning the shooting for a while too, they wait until the high school dance. They wait until a dance because they know that only all of the “popular” kids are going to be there, the kids that they want to get rid of. At the dance Brendan and Gary came with guns, held everybody at the dance in the gym hostage, and rigged the doors with explosives. They tied everybody’s hands and made them go to the middle of the gym. Brendan and Gary injured a few students and teachers before getting too serious. While Gary and Brendan where arguing, a football player was slowly untying his hands free. After their argument, Gary went by the corner of the gym and shot himself in the head, killing himself. The student got his hands free and untied the hands of some other football players. They tackled Brendan to the ground and beat him into a coma. The story doesn’t say if Brendan lives or dies later