What have I found interesting in my studies of Crime stories?

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What have I found interesting in my studies of Crime stories?

Crime. It’s part of everyday life. Unrighteousness, crookedness and wicked thoughts manage to escape through even those who condemn it. I find interesting that we, humans, so called ‘do gooders’ love reading about psychopaths and watching films about murderers and rapists. Why do we get so entertained at the corrupting, crooked force that our society hates most? ‘If I can’t talk to a man, I’ll shoot the damn man’ The Godfather III. Is this the kind of attitude that influences random displays of wanton destruction and massacres? I can tell you that its not amusing to watch a nine year old child chuckling innocently to himself whilst watching a man get gunned down, on television of course. Perhaps we’re all criminals, delinquents, corrupt, crooked or whatever you wish to call it because to be honest the list is endless, glamorised if you like. Look through a thesaurus and the word ‘criminal’ probably has the most synonyms to its name. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a sinful thought, or done something wrong. It could be considered a crime in another country. To be a criminal do you have to fit a certain criteria? Do you have to be harsh voiced, secluded and silent. Typical stereotypes of the figure we hate the most. What is a real criminal are they any different to what we are? Books, movies and plays portray what we see as a typical criminal but it’s not always like that. ‘The difference between a genius and insanity is only measured by success’. - Elliot Carver, Tomorrow never dies.

One of the aspects I have found stimulating whilst reading ‘The Tell tale Heart’ was how the criminal was presented the story. The criminal in ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ is very erratic and is convinced that he is normal, but of course, he is mad. The fast pace created by hyphens and short sentences in the first paragraph gives an instant insight into how the criminals mind works. As I said before, he is mad but is convinced that he is not. We do not see the violent side of the man at the beginning but we see an erratic, possibly impulsive man. Many people say that criminals are often the clever ones, much like ‘Verbal’ from the film ‘The Usual Suspects’. Throughout the story we can see his thoughts and his plans presented to us which shows that he has thought out his plan which seem to be very sketchy and ‘rough’. The use of exclamation marks and questions broaden the scope into the character, building his personality and the way in which we perceive him to be at the beginning to set the story and advance very quickly to the crime. The criminal in ‘The tell tale heart’ likes to talk, too much, it is not usual to have the criminal as the anti-hero/ narrator in most crime stories. The atmosphere surrounding the character is dark, at the peak of the hour as he describes what he does “every night, just at twelve”.

There is no adherent pattern shown in the examples I have studied of how a criminal is presented to us. In ‘The landlady’ the criminal is (or seems to be) very innocent and lonely which later, as the story progresses turns into being eccentric and very unusual and would fool any reader into thinking that she was an innocent old woman at the beginning of the story. It is written in such a way that she and the young man who has come to stay are both focal points of the reader’s attention due to the unusual nature of this particular criminal. The lady is very polite and courteous towards the man not hinting at all that she may be a murderer, words such as “thank you”, “my dear” and various other courteous phrases are unusually present throughout the story sometimes giving the impression that she may be ‘too nice’. On the other-hand though, in the film .The Usual Suspect’ there are many different criminals on which the film focuses on at a particular point, extensively or not, they all come from different backgrounds and have different personalities. These include not so clever people, the typical British man with a strong accent, and disabled, clever and Hispanic people. However the film focuses on and is narrated by a man nicknamed ‘Verbal’ who is, as we find out the mastermind behind all the various crimes committed throughout the film. He, however is disabled and therefore may surprise the viewer who near the end may begin to find out that it is him. It is because his character is tailored and developed in such a way that in the end it is hard for us to perceive him as being the criminal mastermind. He is portrayed at the beginning as the handicapped, dumb in the sense that he does not stand out and so is less significant to us, but this image gradually changes. The story is told from his perspective as he recalls events, he is the narrator and in real time/ present day he is being interrogated by a detective but these scenes only get persistent later on the film as we see the story develop near the beginning. Verbal is very calm and controlled in the interrogation and he is very good at displacement activity avoiding the subject in question and is therefore not as dumb as we think he may be. He turns more and more ruthless and violent near the end of the film, we see a more aggressive Verbal (his nickname) as his true persona is revealed to us, finding out that he is Keyser Soze and altogether we now get the impression that he is very insecure, unstable and unpredictable. For example when asked in the interrogation room why he didn’t help Keaton he doesn’t reply and is visibly uneasy, perhaps showing signs of guilt, later on he begins to cry.  

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In The Lord of The Flies the ‘criminals’ (if all of them are classed as that) are presented in very much the same way as in ‘The usual suspects’ where the y all have different and unique personalities and are all from different backgrounds. The difference however is the way in which these children behave and change. I will concentrate on one of the main characters; Jack who I think shows the biggest tendencies towards being a criminal. At the beginning the children are lost and do not know what to do. These later turns into a bitter competition ...

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