49 pages • 1 hour read
I Was a Teenage Slasher
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Fate Versus Free Will
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses extreme violence and death by suicide.
Whenever Tolly Driver transforms into a slasher, he loses control of his body. He describes himself as a passenger in his own head, watching as the force that later becomes known as Strappy dispatches his former tormentors. Tolly can’t choose to spare his victims, nor can he redirect his slasher rage toward those more “deserving” of death than his one-time high school bullies. In a sense, he is trapped by his fate in the slasher narrative, killing his peers in the marching band precisely because that is what a slasher is meant to do.
The idea that Tolly has no agency over his actions speaks to the way he feels destined for an unremarkable life in Lamesa. Tolly is unsure of what direction his life might take after high school. His school’s encouragement to develop his talent for writing suggests that he could go to college. He more frequently considers, however, the likelihood that he will end up following his father’s footsteps to become a pumper. Without the resources to apply himself to a life beyond Lamesa, Tolly can’t see the point in working to fulfill his potential. The world suggests that he has the choice to steer his life in a different direction, but Tolly doesn’t believe that’s true. As he indicates in Chapter 5, “Even if I don’t become a teenage slasher […] I still wasn’t going to make anything of myself” (223). The act of killing his motivated peers signals a deep-seated resentment for their agency. They might have the ability to enact the choices they want to make, which doesn’t seem fair to Tolly.
The fact that reality seems to rearrange itself to fit this narrative reinforces the idea of fate. Amber, who had never shown an aptitude for her studies, starts studying the encyclopedia to become a final girl. Justin’s parents show up to act as red herrings, even if they aren’t aware of it. Some of the marching bandmembers, like Lesley, act against their own identity to fulfill the tropes of the slasher movie. This indicates that fate is more powerful than free will in the narrative, yet Amber’s attempts to prevent Tolly from killing again hints at her belief in Tolly’s future. One of the reasons Tolly values his friendship with Amber so much is that she is the only one who does not distance herself from Tolly when she begins to ascend the social ladder. Although she reacts to the discovery that Tolly is a slasher with horror, she does not abandon him and allow fate to take its course. Despite Tolly’s self-defeating beliefs, Amber believes that there is a life for her best friend after the slasher film ends.
Her belief is ultimately validated by Tolly’s survival. Although he does live the rest of his life quietly on a Colorado salvage yard, he does not obey impulses to kill again, even though his final girl is still out there. He instead repurposes his slasher abilities to go on through life. As a final act of defiance against fate, Tolly dies by suicide to prevent the reignition of his slasher instincts, thus saving Amber when she returns with her son to find her old truck. Though it isn’t a happy ending, this resolution shows that Tolly was ultimately capable of exerting agency over his actions and values his affection for Amber more than his need for revenge.
Grief and the Struggle for Social Acceptance
When the novel begins, Tolly is still grieving the recent loss of his father in a tragic accident. That grief distances him from a milieu where he already feels quite isolated. Although Tolly aspires to talk to his crush, Stace Goodkin, he does not know how to act around her, not having any foundation for a relationship beyond their time as babysitter and ward. Tolly is instead known for his “fragile” nature, which derives from his inability to digest peanuts and affects the lunch menu on a school-wide level. His grief exacerbates the perception of his fragility, so unless Tolly knew how to talk to people other than Amber, he sees himself as being unapproachable in their eyes.
This causes Tolly to have a complicated relationship with his grief. Several times throughout the novel, he looks at the consequences of his father dying and traces his actions as a slasher back to his grief. While the link between these two poles of cause and effect seems indirect, this merely exposes Tolly’s willingness to use his grief to excuse himself from taking control of his life. Tolly’s lack of motivation forces him to observe the social hierarchy of high school, in which he and Amber occupy one of its lowest rungs.
This is where Justin Joss functions as a cautionary tale for Tolly since he, too, had sought to ascend the social ladder and paid the price of his life for it. Coming back from the dead, Justin is also grieving for himself in a way, particularly grieving the life he could have lived. Deek and his friends have little remorse for their actions as evidenced by the fact that they carry on with their lives and exhibit similar behavior toward Tolly. Deek’s party makes Tolly feel keenly aware of the grief for his father and how it isolates him from others, and this makes him act out of the ordinary, thus furthering his social othering. This sensation is paralleled by Justin’s appearance. Not only do they both experience ostracization and loss, if for different reasons; they experience loss because of their ostracization. Tolly loses his potential for a normal youth and adulthood because of his transition into a slasher, a ploy for revenge that wouldn’t have felt necessary had he not been bullied by the same group that victimized Justin.
This makes Tolly feel that both his grief and his social acceptance are totally out of his control. Late into the narrative, however, this idea is overturned by his encounter with the welder, who knew his father and, more importantly, knew his father’s ambitions for his life. When Tolly learns that his father wanted him to transcend his circumstances, he quietly realizes that to take control of his life may be the only real way to honor his father’s memory. If Tolly had processed his familial grief earlier, he might have avoided feeling so socially isolated as a result and gone on to fulfil his potential. Instead, his loss was compounded by his desire for social acceptance, a goal that, he learns too late, can only further his emotional struggle.
The Perils of Revenge
Slashers are motivated primarily by revenge, as evidenced by the backstories of iconic characters like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Kreuger, both victims of an original sin. Justin and Tolly similarly pursue their own quests for vengeance, though their motivations raise the question of whether their actions could be justified. For slashers to go after the people who caused their deaths suggests balance on the scales of justice—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. However, his logic is fully eradicated when the final girl is revealed as Amber, his best friend and biggest supporter. Though he can’t overcome his killer instincts, he realizes that his alter ego’s feelings toward her aren’t justified, and she is undeserving of violence.
During his killing spree, Tolly comes to obey what he and Amber refer to as “slasher logic.” While he personally doesn’t condone killing Lesley and Shannon, along with his other victims, he can more easily cast them as guilty in comparison to the rest of the school when considering how their popularity made them confident enough to humiliate Tolly without fear of consequence. Their continued recklessness emboldens him to humiliate them in return. According to slasher logic, however, Tolly won’t be satisfied by mere humiliation. Tolly compares his fascination around their suffering to a spinning penny, one that he won’t be satisfied by until he sees it fall at the end of its momentum. To end it prematurely is to grant them mercy, which undermines their humiliation.
Importantly, slasher logic only lasts for as long as Tolly’s slasher persona is in control. Whenever he returns to himself, Tolly realizes the extent of his actions and begins considering the impact his victims’ deaths will have on their friends and families. He speaks less to his media portrayal as a slasher than he does to his regret over killing people he has known nearly all his life. To balance his actions out on the scales of personal justice, he considers dying by suicide, even if he knows it isn’t enough to make up for killing the marching band. Instead, after Amber grants him the mercy of living after the slasher movie of his life ends, he spends the rest of his life atoning for his sins in private. This is why so much of Tolly’s memoir is written in an apologetic tone. He acknowledges the hurt that he has caused others, even if he asserts that he wasn’t fully in control of himself.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Stephen Graham Jones
