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Nature versus nurture and crime
Study into the mind of serial killers
Study into the mind of serial killers
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Recommended: Nature versus nurture and crime
The Double Life of John Wayne Gacy
John Szyc, Gregory Godzik, Sam Stapleton, and Robert Peist; what do all of these names
have in common? These four young men and twenty-nine others lost their lives because of Gacy.
John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered thirty-three young men in the timespan of six years.
Throughout John Wayne Gacy’s double life as a rapist and murderer, he exhibits the traits of a
human monster that can only be developed through both nature and nurture, as well as a
camouflaged personality that justifies a greater fear in human monsters, rather than fictional
monsters such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde.
Gacy’s complex story began on March 17th, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. Even though it
seemed that Gacy
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The nurture argument is based on how a person was raised and nature is the argument
that a person was born that way. Gacy’s father was an abusive alcoholic with unreachable
expectations. Gacy Sr. would often become furious with Gacy when he would not live up to
expectations. According to Gacy’s sister Karen, “he wasn’t the nurture”(Killers Tv). This led
Gacy to seek out acceptance throughout his life and it also created a fascination with being in
control. Gacy’s need to be in control was found to be a huge factor in the crimes he committed.
John Wayne Gacy had no sympathy for his victims either; he instead blamed them for what he
had done. Even though Gacy tried the insanity plea and the psychologists found no psychosis,
there is evidence of nature in how Gacy thought and acted. Gacy had problems facing his
sexuality while growing up; he even learned to suppress his emotions. However, later on all that
Gacy had suppressed throughout his life became a problem when he could no longer control
thought. Jay Gatsby is an enormously rich man, and in the flashy years of the jazz age, wealth defined importance. Gatsby’s close friend Nick Carroway once explains that he respects his streagth and unselfishness of his idealism. For example, “Can’t repeat the past? He cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” (Gatsby 110). However, Gatsby’s expression may not be a possibility, but it is a motivation toward positive idealistic thinking. It is because humans are selfish beings’ which are simple minded and think of their own self. Also, Young Gatsby is an over achiever by becoming a quite wealthy, but there were many doubts about his past that holding him from moving forward. Nick Carroway state’s, “Gatsby believed in the green light,
... struggle of not being a failure in life. He endures until he finally succeeds in Dungeon & Dragons. This probably gave him the motivation from what he did not possibly receive in his childhood. Successfulness in an adolescent life is something that gives the desire to achieve it again.
dangerous man and was guilty of the murder, and who knows what else. Upon Walter’s release
...he was broken down and mentally rewired by the government, once again. Big Brother took away the one thing that humans rely on the most, their conscience.
He faced an abusive childhood and had many conflicts over his sexuality. He and his siblings grew up under their Danish and Polish parents, their father was drunk a lot and beat the kids on multiple occasions if they had misbehaved; the man also physically assaulted the children's parents as well. John suffered more struggles at school, not allowed to play with the other kids because of a congenital heart condition. He later realized that he was attracted to men, and experienced great turmoil over his sexuality. When he was a young boy he was sexaully assulted by a family friend. Gacy was a high school dropout, in the 1960s he became a fast food chain manager and became a self-made building contractor. He was also a clown performer for children's parties during this time, later to be known as the Killer Clown. Gacy married and was divorced twice in his life, along with one biological children and two stepchildren. In 1964, Gacy married Marilyn Myers, he worked for her in laws in Iowa at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, together they had one son. After rumors of a sexual assault made by Gacy on a young teenage boy, Marilyn divorced Gacy and left with her son. Carole Hoff was Gacy second wife, they were married on June 1, 1972. She was divorced with two young daughters shortly before she met Gacy. She lived with him in his Summerdale Avenue home, where all of his future victims would be buried and later
In life, we ask ourselves the question what we are? In addition, we also ask ourselves how our perspectives allow us to see this world? These questions are an opening idea’s, which requires the person answering it, to be fully aware of his or her life, and then have the ability to judge it without any personal bias. This is why, in the book that was and is in a sense is still talked about in class, The Great Gatsby, which is a book that follows a plethora of charters all being narrated by, Nick Caraway, a character of the book The Great Gatsby. Nick Caraway is the character in the book which judges and describes his and other character’s actions and virtues. Now we speak of a character whose name is Jay Gatsby or other whys known as James Gatz, which is one of the characters that Mr. Caraway, seems to be infatuated with from the start of the book. This character Jay Gatsby develops a perspective, which in his view seems to justify his actions by the way that he saw the world that he was living in. In this essay, I will explain why the ambitions of a person, can lead them to do things that are beyond there normal character.
made him into someone who felt he had no control upon his destiny, because it
Since the beginnings of psychology the debate of nature verses nurture has been going on. Certain psychologists take the position of the nature perspective. They argue that people are born with predispositions towards certain personalities, traits and other characteristics that help shape them into the people that they become later in life. Meanwhile multiple other psychologists argue the nurture perspective. They believe that people are born as a blank slate and their experiences over the course of life help shape their personalities, traits, and other characteristics.
Anybody can write and persuade a certain audience, based on how the writer wants their audience to look at the situation. In Steve Earle’s essay “A Death in Texas”, he persuades his readers that he wants to believe that Johnathan Wayne Nobles was rehabilitated. In the essay, Nobles was a changed man within faith from becoming a religious man within the prison walls. Prison guards learned to trust Nobles with his quick-witted charm and friendliness. Steve persuaded himself that Johnathan was a changed man from the words that they had exchanged over the years on paper. Reality states that no matter how much someone changed in the present, it doesn’t change what they have done in the past. Earle describes in the essay “There he will be pumped full of chemicals that will collapse his lungs and stop his heart forever” (Earle 73). He’s persuading the audience with horrid emotion with facts of a lethal injection that will happen to Johnathan. What Earle doesn’t describe is how gruesomely Johnathan’s murders were. In this world everyone has a chance to know right from wrong, even if someone was brought up wrong in the society. Johnathan was not rehabilitated, maybe at one point accepted his past, but he was still a murderer and a
James Gatz, was a poor farm boy who saw his life as living in poverty. He
One of the main factors of this was the neglect of her parents. It was not stated directly but the fact that her parents did not know what was g...
Gacy would use his contracting business to attract young men eager for work, many of whom were subjected to rape. Thirty-three of who lost their lives.
Ted Bundy was one of the most vicious serial killers in American history. He confessed to 28 grotesque murders in the 1970’s but the actual number of his victims remains
This paper is talking about “The Serial Killer,” but focus on Gary Ridgway- “The Green River Serial Killer.” He earned his nickname because the first five victims that he killed were found in the Green River. He was one of the most famous serial killers in the United States. Ridgway raped, chocked, killer and discarded 48 women, including many teenagers as young as 15 years old (Silja J, 2003). In Ridgway’s mind, he even believed that he was helping the police out, as he admitted in one interview with investigators (Silja J, 2003).
...ther names, so growing up and while killing victims in his adult hood, he called his victims names and proceeded to kill them. Gacy raped, sodomized,tortured and strangled thirty three men over ten years. Referencing his past by calling his victims what his father called him proves that his childhood left an emotional scar and is a prevalent reason as to why he’s committing these crimes.