Essay On Just Before Ford Kills Johnnie

After brutally attacking Joyce Lakeland and killing Elmer Conway, a man who was in love with her, Ford allows Max Pappas’s son, Johnnie, to be taken in as a suspect. Ford has been kind to Johnnie in the past and does not have any reason to cause him harm, however, Johnnie poses a threat to Ford because he is the only one who can link Ford to the murder. In order to protect himself, Ford strangles Johnnie when he visits him at his jail cell and makes it look like a suicide. Johnnie’s murder seems to disprove Ford’s explanations for why he is a serial killer, for Ford does not kill Johnnie as a result of being sexually abused or because he is schizophrenic but because he needs to protect himself from being exposed as a murderer. With this

murder, however, Ford essentially exposes himself to the reader as a cold-blooded killer and as one who does not need or have any scientific explanations for his actions.
Just before Ford strangles Johnnie, he briefly hints that there may not be any explanations, scientific or otherwise, for his inherent evilness.

He is aware that society’s attempt to know and explain evil is futile and meaningless, as he says, “How can a man ever really know anything? We’re living in a funny world, kid, a peculiar civilization… it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it. They can’t see that things are screwed up, so they’re not worried about it” (1310). Ford thinks that society is fooling itself into believing that evil can be known because having rational explanations for terrifying factors, such as a serial killer, gives people comfort that allows them to remain ignorant of the truth. The truth being that Ford kills not because he is suffering from mental illness, but because he likes doing it and he wants to see what his actions will cause. He wants a response to his actions, actions that begin with his irritating speech, continue with his incessant lies, and end in murder. Ford provokes the townspeople and the reader because he is testing their breaking point, demonstrating that the world is in fact a screwed up

place.
Ford explicitly, albeit briefly confesses to the truth about himself as a serial killer.

When he is put into an insane asylum under suspicion of murder, he continues to act as an innocent dimwit because he knows that there is no hard evidence against him. However, in this moment, he finally admits that his reasonable explanations for being a serial killer may, after all, be lies, as Clark explains, “In a metanarrative moment and with characteristic playful, sadistic linguistic skill, Lou deconstructs his own narrative, confirming the inadequacy of reason to understand his actions” (59). The quote that Clark refers to is Ford’s one-line confession regarding his true self, when he says, “We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we’re supposed to have done. We might be any one of these three things, because the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three” (2382). Ford gives the possibility that he kills because he is indifferent to other’s suffering or pain and that he is intelligent enough to get away with it. As a highly clever yet dangerous person living amongst a town of unsuspecting rubes, Ford finds amusement by manipulating the townspeople and tormenting them until they cannot take any

more.
The citizens of Central City finally become aware and certain of Ford’s true self when it is revealed that Joyce Lakeland survived the attack and has named Ford as her assailant. At the end of the novel, when Ford is confronted about his crimes and shown that he will not be able to lie anymore, he knows that he has finally pushed his pursuers to their breaking point. The citizens can no longer afford to believe in Ford’s façade because he has killed too many people. They did not and could not acknowledge that not only have they been tricked by Ford but that they also do not know if there are others just like him, as Anshen explains, “Ford as murderer is the last conclusion people want to draw, perhaps because of the radical implications that his personality can be more conflict-laden and in radical disparity with surface appearances because of what this suggests about a much larger, ignored, class of people” (415). Recognizing that Ford, the seemingly friendly and dull sheriff, is in fact a cold-blooded serial killer means that no one can be exempt from suspicion of their outside character because, to recite Ford, how can a man ever really know anything?
After Ford is confronted, he no longer has to hide his cold-bloodedness and so, in one final violent act, he stabs Joyce between the ribs in front of the people who have come to arrest him. He reveals himself as someone who receives joy from other’s pain when he breaks into hysterical laughter right before he stabs Joyce, incoherently saying, “Two hearts that beat as one… Two – ha,ha,ha, –¬ two – ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha – two – J-jesus Chri – ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha – two Jesus…” (2587). He is ecstatic because he knows he will get to kill Joyce as his last act and will not be arrested for any of his crimes, for he commits suicide right after the stabbing. Ford’s closing words to the reader reveal one last justification for him being a serial killer, he says, “Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and go so little, that meant so good and did so bad. All us folks... All of us.” (2594). This confession, one that Clark writes is “Perhaps his most persuasive and, therefore, most chilling, self-justification (62), is unsettling because Ford believes that killers are not so different from everyone else, for we are all, every person, whether killer or victim, bent in some way.
Conclusion: The Elusiveness of Evil
Throughout the novel, Ford uses various explanations and constructs multiple masks in order to manipulate both the reader and the townspeople into believing that they can know and identify evil. However, his numerous justifications and examples constantly seem to overlap and contradict one another so that he is never truly known to the reader. His anonymity is connected to the evil his is trying to justify, as Clark explains, “Lou, like the evil he ostensibly is trying to explain, keeps disappearing behind his explanations and in the end disappears into the ellipsis of the text – a textual black hole – a fitting end for an impossible narrative” (52). The reader is left without any clear resolution as to the truth about why Ford is a serial killer because there does not appear to be any comprehensible explanation for his evil human behavior.
Ford’s hysterical laughter at the end of the narrative, then, seems to not only reflect his excitement at being able to kill Joyce and get away with his other murders but also because he knows that he has finally shattered the townspeople’s ignorance and has exposed them to the evilness of life. This human evilness that has remained in disguise, constantly finding new means to strike out, has been uncovered and there is no explanation for it. Clark writes about the uncertainty that the novel leaves the reader with, “This narrative whose stated intention has been to make sense for us presents us instead with a brilliant and penultimate example of unreliability; we are left unable to make sense, unable to know even the truth of its existence, let alone an understanding of the nature of evil” (62). The reassurances one receives from scientific explanations for serial killers is put into question because, although research does provide a certain insight into the nature of these dangerously devious individuals, it cannot entirely explain, without there being any doubt, the reasons why someone develops this penchant for murder. There is no explanation because, as Thompson shows through his narrator’s deceptions and manipulations, evil cannot be understood through reason and it will remain obscure and elusive like the enigma that was Lou Ford.