The historian, in contrast, must seize the methodological imperative to understand the logic behind events. Lavergne’s historical attempt to approach the tragedy largely from the perspective of Whitman’s personal biography is nevertheless also influenced by a recognition that true historical truth behind a given event may always remain ambiguous this ambiguity, however, is best left to those who have directly experienced a given tragedy. In this regard, Lavergne’s text is most valuable as an example of how the historian may attempt to re-construct an event carried out by a single individual through a diverse causal chain leading to an ultimate effect, in this case, Whitman’s committing of the infamous murders. At the same time, however, Lavergne also references other unconscious and purely medical factors which may have influenced Whitman, such as the brain tumor which was discovered after his autopsy.
Accordingly, it appears that Lavergne provides a unique reading based on an almost phenomenological viewpoint into the mind of the killer, in so far as he attempts to trace how Whitman’s own life experiences may have informed his decision to take the lives of the others. Lavergne takes an approach to his subject in which he can be said to attempt to re-construct the biography of Whitman up to the point of the killings, thus providing an etiology of the event on an individual level, attempting to dissect the possible logic behind Whitman’s own decision. In his 1997 work A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders, the American non-fiction writer Gary Lavergne examines the infamous 1966 killings carried out by Charles Joseph Whitman, who, firing from various locations on the University of Texas campus, killed seventeen individuals, while also wounding thirty-two. Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
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