Murder of Innocence Do you remember when it happened? Do you remember when the innocence of childhood began to fade away only to be replaced by some hard truths of adulthood? It can be argued that Harry Crane can. The book, "The Bottoms" written by Joe Lansdale is a riveting whodunit mystery, narrated by an elderly Harry Crane who is reminiscing from his bed at a nursing home. Harry takes us back to when he was a twelve year old boy living in the racially charged east Texas town of Marvel Creek. A series of tragic events are starting to take place and the world he once knew begins to unravel. The story begins when he and his younger sister Tom find the body of a mutilated, murdered black woman, the first of many murders Harry deals with during the story. However, while this story is written in the genre of suspense and mystery, it can be argued that there is also a very strong sub-plot of the coming of age story that reads as loud as the suspense in "The Bottoms". …show more content…
Harry is beginning to see the world around him in a different light, from having to deal with death, as well as the beginnings of his sexual awakening to the slowly fading idea that his parents and the other people in his life are not all they appear to be. Harry's veil of childhood is slowly being ripped from him, leaving him no other choice but to go along for the ride. Throughout the book Harry is dealing with death all around him. As stated above, it begins when they find the body of the woman who was violently murdered in the woods behind their farmhouse. While many can agree that a single event like that alone is traumatic enough for a child, it is sadly not the end to all the death that young Harry bears witness to in, "The Bottoms". His own mortality, as well as the mortality of those he loves begins to dawn on Harry while he is secretly getting a bird’s eye view of an autopsy being performed on the woman they found in the woods. Harry remembers the seeing the body lying there on the table and recalls how he felt by stating, "In that moment, something else changed for me. I realized that a person can truly die. Daddy and Mama could die. I could die. We would all someday die. Something went hollow inside me, shifted, found a place to lie down and be still, if not entirely in comfort." (73). It can be argued that it is this moment that his character begins his journey, transitioning from child to adult. Death becomes a strong point for as Harry as he goes on to deal with the murders of Miss Maggie, who was like an adopted grandmother to him, as well as Mrs. Louise Canerton, the local librarian, and the murder he witnesses when the towns people lynch Mose, a family friend. There is nothing more powerful than death to set a firm foot on the path of adulthood and unfortunately for poor Harry it come fast and furious in this book. Another point that can made to the idea that, "The Bottoms" is as much a bildungsroman as it is a suspense novel, in the fact that in the middle of all this chaos, Harry is dealing with the twinges of his own sexual awakenings.
Things like looking at nudie cards to making mental notes that Mr. Smootes slutty daughter, Mary Jean is an easy lay. Harry starts to have feeling for the opposite sex that confuse, excite and terrify him. An example of this can be seen when Harry describes how he just wants to get away from Mrs. Louise Canerton during her Halloween party because as Harry puts it, "She was making me feel funny, her face close to mine, her breath sweet as a hot peach pie. I had grown warm and itchy all over." (123). Later that night he reminisces about the swell of her bosom and how her dress fit her in all the right places. Many readers may agree that there is almost nothing more awkward and confusing in becoming an adult then the beginnings of ones own realization of sex and sexual
attraction. Another hard truth to growing up is learning that the people around you are not all that they appear to be. This may be the most resounding, overarching theme throughout "The Bottoms” as Harry has to come to realize that everyone he knows or thinks he knows is not as he once perceived them to be. He come to learn that the townspeople, the very same ones that own shops in town and frequent his fathers barber shop are responsible for the lynching of Mose. He is witness to the beating and watches as they mercilessly hang Mose; he learns that some of those people also belong to the KKK. He also begins to see his parents in a different light then that of just his mama and daddy. Harry comes to find out that his mom made some foolish mistakes as a young girl before she married Harry's dad, Jacob. He also sees his father struggle with addiction after he couldn't stop the lynching of Mose. There is a moment that passes between them when Harry finds him in the barn, drunk. His father is embarrassed that Harry has seen him like that. It can be said that there is nothing more profound in a child's life than realizing that your parents are not the superheroes that one perhaps believed them to be. They are not immortal but fragile humans that make mistakes. There is also the major loss of trust as well as an ultimate betrayal, when Harry finds out that the killer is none other than family friend and co-owner of the barber shop, Cecil. Cecil was going to rape and kill his little sister. It can be argued that this is the final nail in the coffin of young Harry’s innocent, carefree childhood. While "The Bottoms" is a riveting mystery, it is also a poignant, coming-of-age story about the young Harry Crane forcefully having the door closed on his innocence. He has witnessed murders, dealt with mortality, he is beginning to blossom sexually all while dealing with the realization that his parents as well as those around him are not as they once appeared. Harry sums it up best as he states, "Just a short time before I had been a happy kid with no worries. I didn't even know it was the depression, let alone there were murders outside of the magazines I read down at the barbershop..." He also says, "I learned too that people I knew, or thought I knew had problems and lives. Mama and daddy had a past. I'd seen daddy fall off the wagon, and suspected at one time mama had fallen off as well, only it was a different wagon...." He goes on to say, “People I knew had turned out to be strange and savage. They hung Mose and kicked and hit me and my father."(274). Harry is forever changed as he will never look at the world the same way again. Trust will come hard and he will always carry with him the events in Marvel Creek that in essence that took his innocence and murdered his childhood.
Debated as one of the most misrepresented cases in American legal history, Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald still fights for innocence. Contrary to infallible evidence, prosecution intentionally withheld crucial information aiding MacDonald’s alibi. Such ratification included proof of an outside attack that would have played a major role in Jeffrey’s case.
"All things truly wicked start from an innocence,” states Ernest Hemingway on his view of innocence. Innocence, what every youth possesses, is more accurately described as a state of unknowing but not ignorance- which connotation suggests a blissfully positive view of the world. Most youth are protected from the harsh realities of the adult world. Therefore they are able to maintain their state of innocence. While innocence normally wanes over time, sometimes innocence can be abruptly taken away. Some of the characters in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood lost their innocence due to the traumatic events they experienced in childhood and adulthood while some had none to begin with.
The Murderers Are Among Us, directed by Wolfe Gang Staudte, is the first postwar film. The film takes place in Berlin right after the war. Susan Wallner, a young women who has returned from a concentration camp, goes to her old apartment to find Hans Mertens living there. Hans took up there after returning home from war and finding out his house was destroyed. Hans would not leave, even after Susan returned home. Later on in the film we find out Hans was a former surgeon but can no longer deal with human suffering because of his traumatic experience in war. We find out about this traumatic experience when Ferdinand Bruckner comes into the film. Bruckner, Hans’ former captain, was responsible for killing hundreds
Loss of Innocence in Killing a Mockingbird Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather, the streets turned red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. " (Lee 9). This environment, as Scout Finch accurately describes, is not conducive to young children, loud noises, and games. But, the Finch children and Dill must occupy themselves in order to avoid boredom.
Innocence is defined as the state of being not guilty of a crime or other wrong act. The definition does not have any exceptions depending on race, age, gender or other physical characteristics. Yet in the south, the innocence of a guilty white man, is more important than the innocence of an innocent black man. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is about a young girl named Scout who lives in Maycomb County, Alabama. The novel is separated into two parts, the first part is about the adventures of Boo Radley. While the second part is about the trial of Tom Robinson. In the first part of the novel, Scout along with her brother Jem and her friend Dill investigate the mysterious life of their neighbor, Boo Radley. Boo has not left
Baseball, America's favorite pastime, with it being the sport to represent America does this one sport affect all of Americans even if they don’t play? Not everyone in America plays baseball or has even been near a baseball field. However, almost every American knows about the phrase “three strikes and you are out.” These phrases are used every day from regular people that probably don't even play the sport. That's only referring to one sport what about looking at a bigger picture, soccer. With soccer being played worldwide does it affect how we as a world function? Well, almost everything in life affects what we do either positive or negative. With soccer even if a person doesn’t play they know a red card is bad. We have sports all around us affecting our lives minuscule ways without most us
In the editorial “The Innocent on Death Row,” the board argues that the death penalty should not be legal. This article presents a strong argument for the end of the death penalty with clear assertions and effective rhetorical techniques.
On December 18th 2015 Netflix aired with great popularity a 10 part documentary series called “making a Murderer” The documentary, written by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demo, present the case of Steven Avery; a convicted murderer exonerated on DNA evidence after serving 18 years for the assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen. The writers present the series in a way that suggest that Avery was framed by the Manitowoc Country police department. and present that the police planted evidence to frame Steven Avery because he had been exonerated from the previous crime. The ethical problem with this as is presented by Kathryn Schulz in The New Yorker, is that the documentary argues their case so passionately that they leave out important
A man by the name of Challer D. Wadsley was charged with attempted murder, intimidation with a dangerous weapon, domestic abuse, false imprisonment and public intoxication due to the events that took place Monday morning on October second. In which Wadsley and his girlfriend, Courtney Opheim, engaged in an argument while in Opheim’s car that escalated to Wadsley holding a .20-gauge shotgun to her head and firing threats while she was in the process of driving. Which Opheim successfully managed to pull over and have Wadsley execute her car, yet lead to Wadsley firing rounds at her vehicle as she attempted to drive away. This ending in Wadsley’s arrest after the Palo Alto County Sheriff’s Department received several 911 calls of an
Instead of sharing a conspiratorial wink with the adult reader over the child’s head, Potter creates and orders her pictures to wink at the child.
Justifying the Murder in Beloved by Toni Morrison. Beloved is a tale about slavery. The central character is Sethe, who is an escaped slave of the. Sethe kills her child named Beloved to save her. her.
Judith Wright's poem `The Killer' explores the relationship between Humans and Nature, and provides an insight into the primitive instincts which characterize both the speaker and the subject. These aspects of the poem find expression in the irony of the title and are also underlined by the various technical devices employed by the poet.
The piece of art “The Execution of the Innocent Count” is an example of bystander from art. The painting was created in 1460 by the Dutch artist Dieric Bouts, it shows the beheading of a man in front of a castle. There are many people looking and watching the execution of the man. We see that the man head had been cut off and obviously, the people did not do anything to help him because they are still watching. A bystander from art means that the people are looking and doing nothing to save other people from certain threat, that is completely true for the “The Execution of the Innocent Count”
What is guilt? Is Josef K. guilty? What is he guilty of? All of these questions come to mind when you read The Trial by Franz Kafka, but they are not easily answered. The question of guilt is a theme that runs through the entire novel, and it serves to enlighten the reader as to what, I believe, Kafka is trying to say. So what is Kafka trying to say? If one looks at the opening sentence, in the light of the rest of the novel, I believe that it helps to clue us into Kafka's message. The fact that K. believes he has not done "anything truly wrong" (3) harkens back to the question of guilt. So because K. feels he is not fully guilty of anything, why is he hounded by the law? This is where the main theme of the book comes into play in my opinion. Kafka wants us to recognize, with the help of the opening sentence, that K. has done something wrong: he has lived an unexamined life dominated by routine, normalcy, and other people. This is what K. is guilty of.
Michael Sanders, a Professor at Harvard University, gave a lecture titled “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? The Moral Side of Murder” to nearly a thousand student’s in attendance. The lecture touched on two contrasting philosophies of morality. The first philosophy of morality discussed in the lecture is called Consequentialism. This is the view that "the consequences of one 's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.” (Consequentialism) This type of moral thinking became known as utilitarianism and was formulated by Jeremy Bentham who basically argues that the most moral thing to do is to bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people possible.