1. Introduction
Murder is considered one of the worst acts a person can commit; yet in fiction murder is a highly popular theme. From ancient tales to modern thrillers, stories of people being killed seems to always have had a fascinated audience. As society progresses entertainment with real deaths ceases, however fictional ones flourish. The strange interest in death seems to never lose its hold on fiction. Some explain this fascination with murder as a combination of survival instinct and the strong emotions murder stirs in us.
2. Background
Since Cain slayed his brother Abel murder have always been present in fiction. Homer, Shakespeare and Chaucer all contributed to the theme, and with Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle murder nearly got a genre of its own – detective fiction. However, murder as a theme can be found in more than the now classic “whodunit”-stories (where a protagonist solves a crime mystery), almost every genre conceivable has its murder stories. There are murder comedies, like the 2012 movie “Sightseers” (about a serial killing couple on holiday ) as well as stories focusing solely on gruesome deaths. Murder is perhaps the form of death and dying most depicted in fiction; therefore, to be able to understand the fascination with murder one must first understand the fascination with death.
3. Why are we interested in death?
An explanation to why we are interested in seeing and reading about death is that it may be a way of coping with dying. Andrew Taylor, author of several crime novels, calls this a “literary comfort blanket”, which helps us deal with the violence in the world. In “Death, dying and the dead in popular culture”, author Keith Durkin explains it as:
“[…] our insulation from death c...
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... life away by force must be the worst crime, and for the victim the worst way to die. Furthermore, as death happens to us all it is something everyone can relate to, and many probably fear dying a brutal death. Murder in fiction will most likely not disappear; our interest for it is too well rooted in our human nature.
Works Cited
Durkin, Keith, Death, dying, and the dead in popular culture. In Handbook of death & dying,
(pp. 43-50), SAGE Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, 2003.
Mattiuzzi, Paul, Why are we so fascinated with murder?, Everyday Psychology, 25 May 2011, http://everydaypsychology.com/2011/05/why-are-we-so-fascinated-with murder.html#.UyBhsPl5MVC, 12 Mars 2014.
Sightseers, DVD, StudioCanal UK, UK, 2012
Taylor, Andrew, ‘The Strange Appeal of Crime Fiction’, Shots, DATE, http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=120, 12 Mars 2014
Plot is defined as, "the authors arrangement of incidents in a story it is the organizing principle that controls the controls the order of events (Meyer,64)." The element of plot is heavily relied on in the short story, "The Killings" by Andre Dubus. The plot which is completely made inside the imagination of an author (Meyer,64), gives the audience important insight to people, places, and events in the story (Meyer,64) . "The Killings" provides a somewhat conventional plot pattern, where the character is confronted with a problem and is then led into a climax, which late leads to the resolution of the story (Meyer,65). The conventional plot is easy to follow and serves as a basis for movies and other forms of fictitious entertainment (Meyer,65). This simple, yet effective plot makes the story easier to follow and easier to understand. The plot in The Killings also includes usage of flashback as a tool for the audience to fully understand the backgrounds of the characters. This type of organization serves as a basis for the entire story and has the most significance in "The Killings". .
In conclusion, we as people can be desensitized to anything, even something as awful as murder. Philadelphia Journalist John Smallwood put it best when he said: Our desensitization to murder has become frightening. (Smallwood, 1) Shirley Jackson repeatedly shows this desensitization people have with murder through the villagers in ?The Lottery.?
One of the most famous authors in American history is Edgar Allen Poe, thanks to his intricate and unsettling short stories and poems. One of the strongest aspects of Poe’s writing style is the allure and complexity of the narrator of the story. These narrators, ranging from innocent bystanders to psychotic murderers, add depth to such a short story and really allow Poe to explore the themes of death and murder which he seems to have an unhealthy obsession towards. Furthermore, he uses these narrators to give a different perspective in each of his many works and to really unsettle the reader by what is occurring throughout the story. The narrators, whether an innocent witness of death as in "The Fall of the House of Usher" or a twisted murderer as in "The Cask of Amontillado" are used by Poe to discuss the themes of death and murder within these stories and, depending on their point of view, give a different take on such a despicable act such as murder.
“Killings", written by Andre Dubus in 1979, involves several aspects such as revenge, morality, and murder. Elements, such as the story’s title, the order of events, and the development of the characters, are very unique. It successfully evokes emotion and suspense as the plot unfolds in sequence. Though it seems easily overlooked, the title “Killings” is very important due to the fact that the thrill of suspense is left in the mind of the reader. The title encourages readers to question who and what. It is also an intricate setting for the plot’s mood. It implies that a murder has taken place, but that is all the reader knows. The chronology of the story uses a style called "in media res”, a term used to describe the common strategy of beginning a story in the middle of the action or entering on the verge of some important moment (Meyer 2198). In this story, the readers are shown that murder not only takes a life, but it can also take away a living persons sense of self worth, their spirit.
"Taboos and Social Stigma - Rituals, Body, Life, History, Time, Person, Human, Traditional Views of Death Give Way to New Perceptions." Encyclopedia of Death and Dying. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. .
Mass Murderers and Serial Killers are nothing new to today’s society. These vicious killers are all violent, brutal monsters and have an abnormal urge to kill. What gives people these urges to kill? What motivates them to keep killing? Do these killers get satisfaction from killing? Is there a difference between mass murderers and serial killers or are they the same. How do they choose their victims and what are some of their characteristics? These questions and many more are reasons why I was eager to write my paper on mass murderers and serial killers. However, the most interesting and sought after questions are the ones that have always been controversial. One example is; what goes on inside the mind of a killer? In this paper I will try to develop a better understanding of these driven killers and their motives.
For each of us, death is a subject that not only fascinates, but creates fear in our hearts as well. Death is something we avoid in our minds with the hope that it will not touch us. As a society we all fear death; especially in violent cases, which occur naturally and arise through the unusual forces in our society. When such an event takes place we want revenge. In Dead Man Walking, the parents of the murdered girl are left with so much anger that they verbally attack Sister Helen Prejean, when they find out she is still on Matthew Poncelet’s side.
Violence is regularly used in novels because, “It can be symbolic, thematic, biblical, Shakespearean, Romantic, allegorical, transcendent. ...Violence in literature, though, while it is literal, is usually also something else. That...punch in the nose may be a metaphor,” (Foster 49). There are two types of violence found in literature: intentional violence and authorial violence. The first type of violence is typical violence such as shootings, stabbings, drownings, and hit-and-run accidents to name a few. In this category, characters will inflict this type of behavior on themselves or on another character. The second type of violence, however, is meant solely to further the plot without another character’s intention. An example of this “narrative violence” is a death resulting from natural causes or a tragic accident that did not involve another character. Violence created by a specific injury that authors cause characters to visit on one another or on themselves. Both types of violence have similarities and differences. In both, the characters are killed off with the same goals of furthering plot or creating stressful situations for the characters. A difference between the intentional violence and narrative violence is that narrative violence does not involve a guilty party like intentional violence does. To Kill a
Death is part of the circle of life and it's the end of your time on earth; the end of your time with your family and loved ones. Nobody wants to die, leaving their family and missing the good times your loved ones will have once you pass on. In the Mercury Reader, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross “On the Fear of Death” and Joan Didion “Afterlife” from The Year of Magical Thinking” both share common theses on death and grieving. Didion and Kübler-Ross both explain grieving and dealing with death. Steve Jobs commencement speech for Stanford’s graduation ceremony and through personal experience jumps further into death and how I feel about it. Your time is on earth is limited one day you will die and there are many ways of grieving at the death of a loved one. I believe that the fear of death and the death of a loved one will hold you back from living your own life and the fear of your own death is selfish.
Having a to bury a child is hard. Letting the killer run free is harder. “Killings” has different types of feelings and personalities mixed into it. It starts out deep and depressing the around the middle, gets dark the gets back to being depressing but more relaxed. It has hot tempered personalities mixed with jealousy. A man is in grief and early stages of depression over his son’s death. Someone just wants to be a friend and help out the family.
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
In Andre Dubus’ “Killings” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the theme of death is apparent throughout both of the short stories. Both have a plot that revolves around death and murder. They differ because in Dubus’ story the theme of death is obvious because the whole plot revolves around murder, but in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” there are numerous symbols of death as well as a major theme of death. Also, the endings of the stories are of an interesting comparison because they both end in the perspective of a murderer. In “Killings” the reader is left with a depressed feeling and an irresolvable ending, while in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is left feeling like the story was somewhat resolved even after all the gruesome fatality. The endings of these stories leave the reader with opposite feelings and Dubus and O’ Connor show their different outlooks on the world through these endings.
Davies, K. (2008). The Murder Book: Examining Homicide. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
The major theme of Andre Dubus’ Killing,s is how far someone would go for the person they love. It is important to note the title of the story is killings and not killers, for the reasoning that the story does not just focus on two deaths or two murderers but rather the death of marriage, friendship, youth, and overall, trust.
I was very excited to take Death and Dying as a college level course. Firstly, because I have always had a huge interest in death, but it coincides with a fear surrounding it. I love the opportunity to write this paper because I can delve into my own experiences and beliefs around death and dying and perhaps really establish a clear personal perspective and how I can relate to others in a professional setting.