Conscious Cruelty?

One way to interpret the central message of “The Story of  a Suicide” is that Ravi was a regular guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and did not attend for his actions to end in Tyler taking his own life. “Ravi had probably wanted people to be amused by his actions—to “think of him as this bro.” many people described Ravi as being a jerk and someone who gets angry easily, but there are many parts of this story that can lead the reader to believe that Ravi was just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. As mean as the act he did was, he seemed to be doing it just to get a reaction out of others and to entertain people with his “humor”. Although Ravi was being a jerk like many people described him as being, he did not seem to want Tyler to die. What Ravi thought of as a joke and a way of getting people’s attention turned extreme when Tyler decided to take his own life because of it. “’I still don’t kno how to say his name.” Yang replied, “Fail!!!!! that’s hilarious.” Clementi told Yang that Ravi’s parents had seemed “sooo Indian first gen americanish,” adding that they “defs owna dunkin”—a Dunkin’ Donuts. Clementi and Ravi seem to have responded in similarly exaggerated ways to perceived hints of modest roots in the other.” When reading this section of the story Tyler reminded me of previous conversations that Ravi had written. He was stereotyping him not by his sexuality, but by his race which is just as bad of a trait to judge a person on.

The other interpretation of the central message of this piece is that Ravi was in fact consciously and aggressively mean. His friends said he came off as a homophobe because he was so mean about Tyler’s sexuality, but he actually was not. However, that is not the only aspect that Ravi was cruel about. “Dude I hate poor people” Ravi said to his friend about Tyler who was not necessarily well off but was definitely not poor. Ravi had stated that he felt guilty when he first saw the video and talked to his friend about how they shouldn’t tell anyone what had happened.

RAVI: Did you tell them we did it on purpose?

WEI: Yeah . . well that we didn’t know

what we were gonna see

Where is tyler . .

RAVI: Because I said we were just messing around with the camera. He told me he wanted to have a friend over and I didn’t realize they wanted to be all private.

WEI: Omg dharun why didnt u talk to me first i told them everything

This conversation can convince the reader that Ravi was consciously mean and was not just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time because he felt like he could not tell the whole truth and actually even lied to the police about the situation.

I started off thinking that Ravi was definitely in the wrong at the beginning of this story. Although I still strongly believe that he was wrong in what he did, I do not think that Ravi ever meant for this to end in Tyler taking his life. Ravi was cruel, but both boys were quick to judge each other. I think that if Ravi could have seen that this cruel joke would end in Tyler committing suicide then he wouldn’t have done it, but I personally think that people should never be mean to others regardless of if there is an effect/consequence or not. 

-Mckenzi Kerrigan