Mikal Gilmore's Psychology: The Nurturing Of Aggressive Behavior

Anthropology 2260

Dr. Vincent Walsh

Holly Nadeau

2 June 2017

The Nurturing of Aggressive Behaviour

Nurture brings out the aggressive behaviour in humans. Mikal Gilmore’s book, Shot in the Heart, correlates with the aspect of aggressive behaviour nurture because of how he turned out unlike the other four, who did not have a this ability to kill. The nurture of a child into adulthood develops and creates the aggressive behaviour within the environment. The aggressive behaviour can be found in every human, but it is not until the cognitive development of a child that the aggressive behaviour can start to form and become overpowering. Though the basis of aggression is found in people it is not until a child is exposed to an aggressive

Though older, the aggressive behaviour adopts and becomes a part of a person’s life because of the environment. The aggressive behaviour Bessie sees and then added into her own marriage as she becomes just as aggressive; “later he told me it wasn’t the hitting that bothered him so much; it was Bessie’s screaming, her frantic craziness. She beat him until the noise of his crying brought her half-deaf mother outside”(Gilmore, 247). The frustration and anger that had filled Bessie ignited the aggressive behaviour that she was use to in her childhood and became that of nightmares for her children. The hostility and aggression Bessie displays in the novel compared to that of a child in earlier stages of life are similar because Bessie and a child both grew to nurture and apprehend that aggression that would eventually come out either earlier in life or later on, as Bessie shows in her marriage. The environment in which she lives in and the environment she lives in with Frank both show aggressive stigmas that cause the children to dawn that trait of aggression that both parents have developed in their past. The environment is what cause Bessie ti become what she was, it was what caused Frank Gilmore to become what he was and the same for Gary Gilmore. The aggression takes form and comes out when most vulnerable,

Out of the four brothers, Mikal and Frank Jr. did not inherit aggressive behaviour from the family members unlike Gaylen and Gary Gilmore. The aggressive trait is seen as being a mode and inherently a learning tool for the brothers. If the aggressive behaviour was more natural, the aggressive behaviour may bee more predominant for all of them. The nurture and up bringing of each sibling was different. Using the knowledge and information of their childhood, the brothers obtained the ideals from the childhood and took it their adulthood. The mind set of Mikal and Frank Jr, showed that the aggressive behaviour was not normal, whereas Gary and Gaylen knew this information, but pushed it aside. By stating this, the mind set of these brothers prove that once nurture has set a child into an environment, it could go either way. The environment influences the aggression, but the actions towards the children one on one adds fuel to the fame of aggression. Mikal understood the aspect of the selective aggressive behaviour as he states “my father never hit me again. After that, he touched me only in love. I realized now I was the only one in the family that he saved that touch for, and to this day I still feel guilty for that singularity” (Gilmore, 1990, pg. 321). Unlike Frank Jr, who got multiple beatings. In the journal “Child-Rearing