The History Of Bonnie Parker And Clyde Barrow

With the end of prohibition, crime had become socially acceptable, and although Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were part of one of the most infamous crime groups in American history, there is an undeniable element of romanticization in their story. As a society, our fascination with this duo stems from the mystery of their lives, the time period they came out of, and the rationale behind the crimes they committed. The tale of Bonnie and Clyde starts very early, not long after his birth in 1909. It is clear from the time Clyde Barrow became a young teen that nothing could deter him from crime. In his youth, Barrow was caught committing petty crimes; stealing cars, and robbing drugstores(Bonnie, 1). He was influenced heavily by his brother,

Parker got married to a man who later was put into prison, and Barrow grew up around his brother, Buck. Both had witnessed crime. Not to mention the time period they were born into was rife with all sorts of problems. The pair would have been teenagers at the end of the “Roaring Twenties”, and prohibition. During this time, “criminal organizations profited from American’s insatiable desire for liquor, and then defended those profits by murdering hundreds of their competitors and infiltrating legitimate businesses, labor unions, and government,” but that was not even the worst part of this time period. Essentially, Bonnie and Clyde grew up in a time where crime was not only overlooked, but generally celebrated by the rest of the country. People who would not otherwise break a federal law believed that prohibition was something to be rivaled against. There was much backlash against the government, both state and national, and crime became a normal occurrence. This was just an affect of the fact that people stopped believing government was there to keep them safe. It got to the point that people distrusted the motives of their leaders. This lead to gangsters thriving, because “their celebrity images obscured the reality of how liquor profits underwrote organized crime’s development”(Andersen, 5) and in fact, caused people down the road such as Bonnie

With the release of a movie containing an almost entirely different plot, it is difficult to sort facts from fiction. These are the facts, though, of the lives and death of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Their lives were dangerous, not romantic. Being on the run was not a walk in the park, but more of a trudge through quicksand while vultures descend. Barrow was left broken by the destroyed prison system, and Parker damaged by the people in her life. While the two lovers made choices, there was most likely some predisposition for ruthlessness present. Their love was probably at times wrong, and they did not deserve to be gunned down without trial. The people they killed did not deserve to be murdered in the name of cold blood, either,