Essay On Just Before Ford Kills Johnnie

After brutally attacking Joyce Lakeland and killing Elmer Conway, a man who was in love with her, Ford allows Max Pappas’s son, Johnnie, to be taken in as a suspect. Ford has been kind to Johnnie in the past and does not have any reason to cause him harm, however, Johnnie poses a threat to Ford because he is the only one who can link Ford to the murder. In order to protect himself, Ford strangles Johnnie when he visits him at his jail cell and makes it look like a suicide. Johnnie’s murder seems to disprove Ford’s explanations for why he is a serial killer, for Ford does not kill Johnnie as a result of being sexually abused or because he is schizophrenic but because he needs to protect himself from being exposed as a murderer. With this

He is aware that society’s attempt to know and explain evil is futile and meaningless, as he says, “How can a man ever really know anything? We’re living in a funny world, kid, a peculiar civilization… it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it. They can’t see that things are screwed up, so they’re not worried about it” (1310). Ford thinks that society is fooling itself into believing that evil can be known because having rational explanations for terrifying factors, such as a serial killer, gives people comfort that allows them to remain ignorant of the truth. The truth being that Ford kills not because he is suffering from mental illness, but because he likes doing it and he wants to see what his actions will cause. He wants a response to his actions, actions that begin with his irritating speech, continue with his incessant lies, and end in murder. Ford provokes the townspeople and the reader because he is testing their breaking point, demonstrating that the world is in fact a screwed up

When he is put into an insane asylum under suspicion of murder, he continues to act as an innocent dimwit because he knows that there is no hard evidence against him. However, in this moment, he finally admits that his reasonable explanations for being a serial killer may, after all, be lies, as Clark explains, “In a metanarrative moment and with characteristic playful, sadistic linguistic skill, Lou deconstructs his own narrative, confirming the inadequacy of reason to understand his actions” (59). The quote that Clark refers to is Ford’s one-line confession regarding his true self, when he says, “We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we’re supposed to have done. We might be any one of these three things, because the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three” (2382). Ford gives the possibility that he kills because he is indifferent to other’s suffering or pain and that he is intelligent enough to get away with it. As a highly clever yet dangerous person living amongst a town of unsuspecting rubes, Ford finds amusement by manipulating the townspeople and tormenting them until they cannot take any