Crime and Human Nature

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While a person’s surroundings shape them, basic human nature sets the limits. Human nature, while complicated, encompasses aspects that help construct and drive it. One’s nature serves as a force that aids everyday decisions. It plays a much more important role in the life of a person than one realizes. Human nature guides the course of one’s actions and thoughts. Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Murder at the Vicarage both demonstrate that, ordinarily, in societies people obey social and moral laws; however, if following these rules does not enable a person to satisfy their needs, human nature turns and allows justice, greed, fear and in some cases, innate evil to lead to criminal action. Expand

Human nature consists of a set of natural, recognizable characteristics; including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. All of which are a “product of both our innate nature and of our individual experience and environment” (Miller 1). When human nature is affected by certain emotions, it can lead to the urge to act on these emotions. Most people avoid acting on these emotions with guidance or self-control, but some resort to criminal action. Crime occurs because “human nature is full of inconsistencies” but not every person has the nature to commit a crime (Christie, “Vicarage” 227). Almost every person contains some instinctive qualities, but because of the inconsistencies, there are characteristics that remain unique to some people. The motivation or emotions that often lead to the action of these unique characteristics “relate[s] to basic internal desires of control, dominance, anger, revenge, and display of personally perceived inadequacy”(Gonzalez 1).

All crimes involve some sense of justice. Whether the justi...

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...e, Vicarage 232). MORE MORE MORE AND SECONDARY SOURCE

Just as characteristics of human nature lead and motivate crime, they also set the foundation for the planning of the crimes. When someone plans a crime, they take many things into consideration so the crime does not fail and so it remains discreet. Criminals “decide their course of conduct” in favor of their chances of escaping punishment (Gonzalez 1). Criminals allow “self-motivated thinking [to] transpire” (Gonzalez 1). “Desire, opportunity, ability and gain merge to formulate the strategy” for the crime. Everyday people go through an abundance of thought processes for simple decisions and actions. Criminals use that same strategy but think about things with much more detail and importance because the action they commit must be perfect for it to remain a successful secret. In Murder on the Orient Express,

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