The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson - Research Paper Example

? The Killer inside Me Sickness, both psychological and physical has been a part of literatures during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whether it is the obsession and physical weariness in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or the murderous instinct and psychological crime enfolded in Jim Thompson’s The Killer inside me, the theme of sickness seems to shape the plot and events of the story. Jim Thompson focuses on the central character that he makes the narrator of his novel despite the fact that Lou Ford (the pivotal character) is an untrustworthy narrator. The reader is involved with Lou from the very beginning and without judging the truthfulness of his narration the readers are engaged in unraveling the cold blooded crimes committed by him with the underlying justification of revenge. More than the description of the crimes, what is more important is his cynical state of mind, which gets reflected in the way he needles people around him especially by his words which often bore them. He declares his sickness to be perhaps of psychosomatic origin. However Lou Ford on the outside leads the normal life of a respectable cop who is well like by his superiors especially Sheriff Maples. It is the perversion of Lou’s mind, whether it is about sexual encounters or pure cases of murder that gives shape to the plot with an underlying motive of exploring the bifurcated personality of Ford. The novel begins with Lou’s encounter with the proprietor of a restaurant and before that a waitress of the same place. Lou Ford comes to the readers as a fine, polished kind hearted person unless he begins drawling his sentences during his conversation with the proprietor. Lou does not carry a gun because he does not think about crooks like the way people do. Despite being a cop, he thinks that people are “a little misguided. You don’t hurt them, they won’t hurt you. They’ll listen to reason” (Thompson 4). While the proprietor is really nice to Ford and thanks him for showing his son the right way, he initially replies causally, saying that it was not big deal and all he did was to show him some interests about life. The proprietor insists on complementing him by stating “because you are good, you make others so” (Thompson 4). Till this point readers would be impressed with Ford who seems to be a perfect human being part from being an ideal lawkeeper. The author switches the opinions about Ford quite briskly as the narrator states, “I liked the guy—as much as I like most people, anyway—but he was too good to let go. Polite, intelligent: guys like that are my meat.”(Thompson 4) the last phrase gives a hint about his perversion of mind. He purposely tries to bore him with philosophical talks while he knows very well that people dislikes a bore and “If there’s anything worse than a bore, it’s a corny bore” (Thompson 5). The moment he begins drawling out long sentences he finds that the proprietor is eager to quit the conversation. So Lou gets a sadistic pleasure in teasing people around him. The novel also introduces us to Bob Maples, the sheriff who trusts Lou a lot and is ready to back his decisions without knowing what they are. The readers come to know of his sickness directly for the first time when he meets Joyce Lakeland. One comes to know of the sickness he went through and encountered for the first time when he was fourteen years old. With a deeper thought one can perceive that this sickness is related to sexual perversion. It is aroused once again after a long time when he meets Joyce. His sexual perversion is aroused when he enters into a bickering with Joyce after she finds him holding her gun. By revealing his identity she begins to get violent with him and hits him hard. It brings out the long dormant sickness inside him and he is engaged into a violent sexual assault on her. Even a while before this happens he tries to get away as fast as he can because he fears that “She’s talks. She’d yell her head off. And people would start thinking, thinking and wondering about that time fifteen years ago…” (Thompson, 13). He apologizes the moment he comes back to his senses but she does not want him to apologize and apparently Joyce is the person who allows him to let out his perverted side of psychology through sexual acts. The narrator explains his act saying, “I began needling people in that dead-pan way -needling ’em as a substitute for something else. I began thinking about settling scores with Chester Conway, of the Conway Construction Company.” (Thompson 15) This reveals the reason behind his way of interacting with the seemingly harmless and nice people around him. He gains a pleasure which acts as a substitute for sexual perversion that has been trying to find an outlet for long. In fact his brother Mike who had taken the blame of Lou’s sin of killing a young girl after sexually violent attack on her. This happened fourteen years back and after Mike is freed he expires on a construction site and this leads Mike to think that Chester Conway of the Conway construction company is responsible. Meeting Joyce unleashes this fire for revenge inside him once again. Meanwhile Joyce expresses her desire of running away somewhere with Lou and she plans how to arrange the money. They begin by blackmailing the entrepreneur to expose her affair with his son. He betrays Joyce by almost killing her violently by battering her to death. He also shoots the son of the magnate Elmer Conway and trying to make the scene appear to be a lover’s quarrel leading to miserable ending. However Joyce manages to live (although in a state of coma). Ford then begins to attempt frame other people for the murder and in the way he has to commit more murders. The story which actually brings out the inner devil through his actions is therefore shaped and formed with the help of his perversion. What is even more surprising is that despite being a pervert and thinking with a strong deviation from the normal way, he is still respected by many people who have not seen his face without the mask. The author carefully crafts the transition of Ford from normalcy to sickness. The sickness is present in the form of a faint hint when Ford ‘needle’s’ the person at the restaurant but gradually one comes to know the underlying reason behind this attitude in the cop when his desires and frustrations are unfurled through the sexual perversion which he calls his sickness. Despite all his sickness what makes Ford a successful narrator is that his “voice is as confiding and unsentimental as the ones in our own heads. His awareness that this “sickness” is something to conceal makes him frighteningly human: Lou may hide behind the mask of a rube, but he never kids himself” (Lugar 113). This apparent normalcy makes the story all the more interesting as people misread him. The author even adds realism to his character as he does not try to escape from the reality of his sickness and is apparently honest about it with the readers. With the growing symptoms and outcomes of his sickness the character of Lou with his psychosomatic bent of mind represents the alienation within the common people. Different dimensions of his character come out as the story unravels and he interacts with his surroundings. For instance one finds the human side in him in the way he talks and confides in the young boy Johnnie but his intention is to frame him for the murders. He confesses his murders to him and even explains his dual status (normalcy and sickness) by stating, “guess I kind of got a foot on both fences, Johnnie. I planted ’em there early and now they’ve taken root, and I can’t move either way and I can’t jump. All I can do is wait until I split. Right down the middle.” (Thompson 141) He is aware of the contradictory persons living inside him but is unable to withdraw from the same. O’Donnell describes him as “a schizophrenic relation to the inhabitants of the town and the laws they live by, for he [Lou] is both a multiple murderer and deputy sheriff” (O’Donnell 131). At times the readers find him calmly browsing through his father’s books and soothing people to bring them back on proper tracks of life. In fact this side of him enjoys coming back to the library since it was similar to “coming out of the darkness into sunlight, out of a storm into calm. Like being lost and found again” (Thompson 31). He seems to have developed a survival strategy within himself despite living in the world of an alien – alienation not only from normalcy but form the human side of himself, the side which is gradually dying with each violence and offence he commits. therefore, the readers witness two main sides of Lou – on one hand he seems like a dull and slow witted boring companion and on the other he is a violent and shrewd murderer who keeps himself (his real self) hidden from public view. His good image is simply a loosely worn costume which is flung around himself in order to portray the side he wants people to see. Some times he moves from the cliches to clever and cunning comments trying to fool people around himself. However he is not always able to hold back the killer instinct and at times he has to be ready to make adjustments as the mask falls under strains. In fact Lou narrates his schemes for murder to the reader before he commits them but although he thinks his grounds are all covered or he has been able to justify his actions, the reality is that the readers do not consider the same. This is the justification of a psychopath and hence cannot convince a normal person. Hewitt and Donahoo compares his character to O’Connor’s Misfit. In both cases laughter is used as a key weapon which the characters uses in the form of “mockery, misery and defiance” (Hewitt and Donahoo, 118). He even tries to escape the truth for a while in the cell but he does not hide the truth from the readers – “I spent the first day and night in one of the quiet cells, and most of the time I was trying to kid myself. I couldn’t face up to the truth yet, so I tried to play like there was a way around it. You know. Those kid games?” (Thompson 250) He attempts to do the “impossible things” in his “imagination”. He also reveals his skill with acting or pretending to be something or feel something which is not real and true. For instance he became a smoker form his eighteenth birthday when his father told him that he was a man. Smoking cigars has been till date an act of manliness and not out of his inclination or likeness towards it. However he has never admitted the same all this while. Another side of Lou which adds interest in different events of the story is the way he expresses his philosophical viewpoints about life in different circumstances. In the asylum when his cigars are taken away he has no other option but to admit that he does not like smoking actually. He expresses his philosophy at this juncture saying “when life attains a crisis, man’s focus narrows” (Thompson 253). his acts of pretension and shying form the reality prevails as he tries to tell himself that the people who are keeping him in the asylum have evidence and that is why they are not questioning him. Then he gives the reasons by himself. First the law had the evidence against him from the very beginning and also they know that questioning would hardly have any positive effect – “you can’t step on a man’s corn when he’s got his feet cut off” (Thompson, 254). He understands quite well his situation but the readers would not find any regret or repentance in his voice. This neutrality complements him as a narrator but not as a human being who has committed crime against humanity and realizes it himself. His self diagnosis makes this more evident as he meditates on the cases of a schizophrenic boy whose mental transformation began taking place from puberty and he is conscious of his deeds and even suffers from guilt. The person whom he calls Kraepelin is shrewd and is able to reason his actions. Here he reveals his situation and also “is able to draw his readers into an identification with him – during his crimes, his sickness and now his own self diagnosis” (Henriksen, 120). In fact, according to Gray, Jim Thompson has an inclination towards “psychopathic violence” and while his works have few detective characters they have plenty of “unreliable narrators and protagonists whose mental state verges on and often topples over into psychosis.” (Gray 338) He portrays crime as a work of the mind just as he does in case of Lou whom he portrays as a lawkeeper and thus he disregards the social categorization of a crook and a cop and concentrates on dual personalities and the fact that crime takes birth in psychological perversion. From the above discussion one may say that the character of Lou Ford and the narrator of the story is governed by psychosomatic disorder which gains hold over his actions and kills his human side gradually. It is the meeting with the prostitute Joyce that brings out the cruel and cynical side of his nature apart from the fire of revenge which actually leads him to commit many murders in cold blood while keeping an easy appearance in public. This is what makes the story more interesting to read when the interactions with some characters reveal that Lo’s negative side is unknown to them. This gives the readers an extra edge over the other characters because Lou being the narrator is very honest about his psychological status. Lou has a decent profession and noble one too and apart form being educated he is sharp enough to gauge and evaluate his actions and those of others. The psychological status and disruptions unfurled gradually from the beginning hints that the suitable place and final destination for such a character would be the asylum but even in the asylum he unleashes his wisdom and philosophical talks which once used to bore the people around him and he reveals some inner trait of his character and perhaps even a hidden guilt which helps in drawing the reader closer to him and even identify some dormant suppressed sides of their psychology which could be unraveled through self analysis. Overall it is the perverted state of Lou’s mind which finally gives shape to the novel and despite the uneasy read, the novel portrays the simultaneous presence of obsession and humanity in a single character whose crimes take their origin in his perversion. References Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me. Lion, 1952 Gray, Richard. A Brief History of American Literature, Willey-Blackwell, 2011 Hewitt, Avis and Robert Donahoo. Flannery O’Connor in the age of terrorism, Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2010 Henriksen, Margot A. Dr. Strangelove’s America. University of California Press, 1997. Lugar, Austin. Mystery Muses, Crum Creek Press, 2006 O’Donnell, Patrick. Latent Destinies. Duke University Press, 2000 Read More