Mark David Lennon And His Disassination Of John Lennon

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Mark David Chapman One of the most infamous assassinations associated with The Catcher in the Rye is the assassination of John Lennon. On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was assassinated by Mark David Chapman. There has been multiple speculations on the reasoning to why Chapman decided to murder Lennon. One of the explanations was that Chapman was extremely offended by Lennon’s atheist ways and decided that it was necessary to murder him. Another possible theory is that Chapman saw Lennon as an innocent who will soon be corrupted. Chapman was a born again Christian having devout faith in Jesus Christ. He, along with many other Christians, took offense when Lennon had disrespected Jesus saying, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. …show more content…

The difference between Chapman and other Christians was that he decided to assassinate Lennon. During Chapman’s trial, he quoted an excerpt from the novel that said, “[...] I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them [...]” (Salinger 173). From this certain excerpt he had chosen to use during his trial, we can speculate that Chapman had only wanted to save the children’s innocence and did not want Lennon’s atheism to hinder children’s …show more content…

During the Beatles’ reign as the world’s most renowned rock and roll band, Chapman was very fond of them. Once the band had disassembled, Lennon had exited out of society’s eyes and lived in seclusion for six years. In 1980, Lennon had came out of his private life and started to be involved in publicity, participating in interviews and such. That same year, Chapman had assassinated Lennon. The coincidence of the year Lennon resurged from private life and the year Chapman decided to murder him had been brought up to some speculators’ attention. According to an article written by Daniel Stashower, one of the main themes of The Catcher in the Rye is that “Commercial success at the ex­pense of artistic integrity is [...] the worst expression of phoniness.” Chapman could have thought that if Lennon did further participate in publicity practices, it will make him less genuine. As a result, Chapman thought that in order to protect Lennon from losing his innocence, he had to murder

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