Reflexive Reading: The Killer Inside Me Edition

Casey Affleck playing Lou Ford in the 2010 adaptation of the novel

       From the moment I began to read The Killer Inside Me I found that there was something strange about Lou. Obviously was meant to do right away because in the first pages of the book Lou assaults and beats Joyce, but they both enjoyed the encounter so who's to say that it was weird? Maybe for them it was just a “kink,” a way to arouse themselves sexually that I just did not identify with. What I found most strange in Lou was his will to admit that he put on a face all the time and that he found it amusing to pester people with boring cliches and platitudes. Lou states in the first chapter, “If there's anything worse than a bore, it's a corny bore. But how can you brush off a nice friendly fellow who'd give you his shirt if you asked for it?” (Thompson 5) This immediately in my mind made me realize that I could not trust this man, that he pretended to be a sensitive and kind man who's purpose in life was nothing but to look out for the well being of others. Furthermore, it made me realize that he wanted people to view him a bit of a dolt. It seemed strange who someone who seemed so aware of himself and his actions would want people to have such an erroneous image of him unless he was hiding something. From the very beginning of the text I could not trust anything that Lou told us. He did not only seem to be lying to people to protect himself and his secret, but it seemed he also enjoyed lying to people about who he really was.

        The moment that Lou mentioned “the sickness” as a justification for his first murder I understood that this was a man who had delusions of what and who was for sure. He viewed himself as suffering some sort of illness, but not a mental illness as he believed to be very cunning smart and capable. In a sense I believe that part of trying to keep up a charade of being a good cop and a good person was not entirely for the purposes of hiding his “sickness” from others but from himself. To the last minute Lou was unable to admit that he was truly ill. Lou believed that “[p]lenty of pretty smart psychiatrists [had] been fooled by guys like [him]” and that he might have “the condition; or [he] might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell.” (Thompson 222) This to me resonates with the ideas expressed in the DSM IV on Sociopathology where it is expressed that people with Antisocial Personality Disorder often see themselves as calculating and looking out for their best interest, as if life were some sort of game for them. 

 Lou actually at the end of the book states, “All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little...” (Thompson 244) Lou seems to have viewed life as a reign where only the fittest survive and found himself to be among the fittest at least in terms of intelligence as seen in the previous statement. The DSM IV on Sociopathology helped me to understand that Lou is the perfect picture of a mental illness, but it did not help me understand the “why” of why Lou did what he did. The ideas behind Antisocial Personality Disorder are as vague as the concept of “the sickness” that Lou comes up with, there is no why, it just is. The DSM IV states that there are several things that affect people who have Antisocial Personality Disorder and that it appears “to be associated with low socioeconomic status and urban settings,” (Osksenborg 334) and that men are more prone than women to suffer from this, but other than that there is no clear explanation as to why this disorder arises. I understand the symptoms that Lou showcased in the novel a lot better but I did not find any justification for what did. Moreover, his explanations for his killings and hurting others were not very rational either. Lou spoke of “the sickness” as a justification, and when he attempted to murder Joyce and murdered Elmer he stated. “Joyce had asked for it. The Conways had asked for it.” (Thompson 44) Although, he appeared to himself to be a reasonable man full of knowledge and insight into other people's mind I believe he failed to understand the one person that mattered, himself. There is no logic or reason behind the murders except that they had it coming, that it was their destiny in a sense. The idea of the “sickness” is an obscure concept as well that does not explain anything about what is really going on in Lou's mind. I feel as though my understanding of evil has decreased even more as we read through text like Primo Levi's survival tale and this novel. There are no clear motivations, no clear reasons behind causing harm and pain to others, except because “I was told to” or because “I felt like it.” More and more it seems to be that the heart of man is akin to the indescribable darkness that Conrad explored in his novel, as if there were no real rationality behind it and as if we will never be able to explain and explore it even with all our science.

Reflexive Reading: Paradise Lost Edition

        Milton gives Satan some very interesting characteristics in Paradise Lost, he makes him appear heroic, valiant, purposeful, a great rhetorician and all in spite of the fact that he is presented as rebelling against the ultimate power, God. At the same time it interesting to note that it is rebelliousness that also makes him relatable to us as a character, we find something noble in his fight for freedom. I think people in general seem to love rebels, law breakers, when they see their cause as being noble in someway and what is more noble to us Americans than fighting for freedom?

I think, as I've said that Satan's motivation in Paradise Lost seems to be a freedom, to not be tied down by rules. In a way it seems as though Satan is trying to escape the limits that God has set, he's trying to possess more than he already has and feels he deserves to have more power than he is seems to be allowed to have. Satan's quest seems superficially to be heroic but really when we strip him of all his fanciful rhetoric his motives are just those of greed and envy for something that has not been permitted to him. In really his motives aren't really freedom against an unjust ruler, as God does not seem to have anything that isn’t understandable from Satan and the rest of the fallen angels, or if he had we will never know because Milton never made it quite clear why the war was started. Servitude seems to be an issue for Satan, perhaps God is a harsh dictator. This can be seen when Satan claims “To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/ Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.” (Milton, 262-263) Here it is apparent that Satan had the ambition to try to rule Heaven, or at least be in power in some place, because while his first intent was to rule Heaven, he seems to accept the idea of having some sort of power to rule even if it is in Hell. Therefore, it appears that Satan's true motives are selfish and greedy, and although it appears as though they are noble nothing positive comes of it, something which Milton represented in a literal way by placing Sin and Death as the offspring of Satan's rebellion.

        I feel as though Satan in Heaven found himself questioning why there were rules and boundaries, why he could not obtain more power, or knowledge than what he already possessed from God. I find it curious that Satan asks to himself when spying upon Adam and Eve the reasons that God might have for forbidding them to eat from the tree of knowledge, it is an example of the true nature of Satan. He states, “Knowledge forbidden?/ Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord/ Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,/ Can it be death? And do they only stand/ By ignorance, is that their happy state,/ The proof of their obedience and their faith?” (515-520) Satan is not simply jealous or envious of Adam and Eve
because they are beautiful creations but because they are innocent and ignorant, without sin, and this caused by the fact that they have knowledge of good or evil, which is God has seemingly endowed the angels with. However, at the same time Satan also questions if their happiness and the harmonious relationship they carry on with their Lord is only based on the fact that they are ignorant. Satan brings up some interesting questions like whether only obliviousness can keep the peace? Or whether God can only secure their faith and obedience by having them be ignorant? These are interesting questions for Milton to ask in his poem, because it pertains not only to God, or religion but to politics as well, a topic which concerned him very much as well. Can we trust a ruler, a human or deity, to rule humanity honestly and justly when we as subjects are kept in ignorance? Is that not in some sense evil? Despite the fact that this text is suppose to be religious, the ideas of what is good and what is evil are not always made clear. Evil is not necessarily Satan's rebellion, evil is not Adam and Eve's defiance, in other words these things are not considered evil, neither for Milton nor God. I don't believe that Paradise Lost really explores the nature of evil, to me it seems to explore questions of oppression, power, motivation, and knowledge. Satan might have caused the fall of human kind and while it could be thought of as destructive and malicious, but in a sense he also set Eve and Adam free of the bonds of ignorance and gave them the ability to aspire to something higher than themselves.