Trigger Warning Chapter 43: So What Have We Learned?

It’s the penultimate chapter! We’re actually almost done with this book after – through absolutely no fault of our own – over a year of reading it. It’s gonna be weird to see it go since by now it feels like it’s always been there, much like the looming specter of capitalism. Trigger Warning has not managed to sway my opinions about capitalism somehow. But what did everybody in this book learn in the end? Let’s find out!

Trigger Warning: Chapter 43

I mean, we find that out after the climactic final showdown between Jake Goddamn American Hero Rivers and Matthias Foster. Honestly, it’s not very interesting, to the point where even the book won’t stop drawing attention to how generic its ending is:

Finally, Foster called, “Don’t try to talk me into surrendering. I’ll never be taken alive. Victory or death!”
“Colonel Travis at the Alamo,” Jake said. “Don’t dirty up the words of a noble man, Foster. […] Put that detonator aside, step out, and face me. Just the two of us.”
Foster laughed.
“Head to head? Mano a mano? Just like the showdown in every bad book ever written?”

Your words, book.

Jake bluffs and declares that the hostages have all been rescued from the building, so if Foster blows it up now, he won’t be remembered like “some sort of infamous mass murderer” because he’ll only kill himself and Jake. This gives Foster enough pause where Jake gets the jump on him and the detonator slides away.

Foster leaped to his feet and clawed at the pistol he had stuck behind his belt earlier. Jake’s vision cleared enough for him to see that. He reached for the gun at the small of his back, drawing faster than he ever had.

Faster than he ever had.

Sometimes real life just played out like a book or movie. Final shoot-out.

We get it, book.

Jake gets shot in the chest (non-fatally, don’t think about it too hard) and Foster gets shot in the throat.

Foster stumbled back and forth, trying to stop the blood that fountained from his bullet-torn throat. He couldn’t do it, of course, and after a second the gory stream slowed as his heart began slowing to its inevitable stop.

“Of course”, just in case the reader forgot how bleeding worked.

But it’s all over! Let’s see if the book has anything careless to say about trauma!

Counselors provided by the college were overworked as they tried to help the students deal with the trauma they had gone through. This had been a macroaggression, and some of those already easily triggered snowflakes would never get over it.

Yes. Brave words from a person who wrote a whole-ass book about how angry she is about liberal college students.

Alright! Climax? Done. Where are they now? Ready to go.

• Natalie Burke is expected to survive and taken into custody, doomed by her devotion to an overzealous man whom she never got enough of an identity to narratively justify her interest in. Just like she did for the rest of the book.
• Pierce Conners “told the other members of his study group that he thought he would be studying on his own from now on.” Fuck, I wish we got this conversation. “So, uh, I’m not showing up to study group anymore. Yes. Yes this is about that time you tackled me during a hostage situation and almost got me shot by a terrorist. Yeah. Ok, well, see you in class, bye.”
• “Dr. Alfred Montambault tendered his resignation from the faculty. He planned to go on a trip to France, to see his ancestral homeland”. So Montambault goes from being a white man who identifies as black out of white guilt to being an American who identifies as French because he studied abroad for a semester. I love it. This might actually be the book’s most satisfying character journey, just not for the reasons that the book intends.

Jake’s rich grandfather strikes a deal with the college president that he and the other wealthy patrons won’t pull the school’s funding if Jake gets a plaque in front of the library. Apparently/obviously, without consulting Jake.

“At least it’s not a damn statue,” Jake said as he looked at the plaque with his name on it mounted next to the entrance of the Burr Memorial Library.
Frank McRainey said, “Hey, your grandfather told me he thought about making them rename the whole library, but he decided the plaque was enough, since you didn’t die and all.”

That’s not a bad joke, honestly, but what if it were… longer?

“Yeah, staying alive fouled it all up, didn’t it?”

Oh, yeah, now the trace of comedy is gone. Great job.

Jake and McRainey agree that Granderson ought to have a plaque too. And talk about how nobody liked him. Jake confirms that he’s dropping out, and walks off through the quad, when, suddenly, a tertiary protagonist appears…

Jake had walked halfway around the plaza when he became aware that a man had fallen in step beside him. Funny, he hadn’t heard the guy come up at all. Even more surprising, when Jake glanced over, he recognized the man from Keith Randall’s gun range.

That’s right. But what about Dog?

Now, before you get your hopes up, we absolutely don’t get an explanation about who the fuck Dog is (apparently, as a reader informed me, the protagonist of other books by these authors, who’s just kind of… here… in this book… like a tea party Nick Fury). But don’t despair! Because the explanation we do get… dear reader… please enjoy this bonkers eleventh hour dialogue in full:

“Mr. Rivera,” he said.
“Not quite, Jake,” Rivera said.
“We haven’t been introduced, so I guess Keith told you my name like he told me yours.”
“Not exactly. I’ve known who you are for a long, long time, Jake. And the name’s not really Rivera, although I’ve gone by that for almost as long. It’s Rivers, just like your mother’s name. And your grandfather Big Joe’s name.”
Jake stopped and frowned over at the older man.
“What the hell are you saying?” he demanded.
“I’m Barry Rivers. I’m your uncle.”

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Next week, Ariel wraps this all up with the maybe-setting-up-the-sequel–ass last chapter of Trigger Warning. Or, as one of our beloved characters would say when he’s back from learning about being a white person in France, hon hon hon!

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