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Part 4 The Corner - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Very critical that the justice system does not take into account the mental conditions of prisoners, more in regards towards Perry
    - - "quite colourblind to any permutations between black and white"
      - Kansas Justice system is not keeping up with the times with the rule described as 'ancient British'
    - - Questions the credibility of criminal testimonies
- - - - Killing spree
- - - - True Justice was not obtained in the case of Dick and Perry, they were unable to be rehabilitated and as such killing them demonstrates the justice system to just as 'cold-blooded' as the killers
    - - Blatant critique on class disparity, only those of a lower social hierachy suffer
    - - The psychological evaluations of the Criminals is simplified to whether the accused was aware that his actions were wrong, and thus only a 'yes' or 'no' answer is all that was required to put a man to death
        
        Dick
        
        “impulsive in action, likely to do things without thoughts of future discomfort to himself or to others”
        
        “I know it is wrong. But at the time I never give any thought to whether it is right or wrong. The same with stealing. It seems to be an impulse.”
        
        He impulsively decides to go back to Kansas, where he's just participated in a mass murder, because he's broke and thinks he can pass some more bad checks there.
        
        Plan to kill the Clutter’s and the intention to rape Nancy -> no consideration to the impact on his own life, “can’t control [himself] sexually” and the punishment he faces, as the sorrow he puts his parents to
        
        “he does not seem capable of learning from experience”
        
        Steal the weights off a dead man's eyes! […] Dick would've gone to jail more times than you can count, except nobody around here ever wanted to prosecute.
        
        “an unusual pattern of intermittent periods of productive activity followed by patently irresponsible actions”
        
        “cannot tolerate feelings of frustration”
        
        Dick is particularly frustrated around those who live contented lives. “Envy [and frustration were] constantly with him the enemy was anyone he was someone he wanted to be or who had or had anything he wanted to have”
        
        “uncomfortable in his relationships to other people … a pathological inability to form and hold enduring personal attachments”
        
        He robs his friends. He claims to like his parents well enough, but that doesn't stop him from writing bad checks that they'll probably have to cover, or "borrowing" the shotgun that kills the Clutters from his parents' house.
        
        Dick sees people in terms of what they can do for him. He decides to invite Perry along on his "score" because he knows it's more than a one-man job, but after a couple of weeks, he's thinking of ways to get rid of him.
        
        Perry
        
        “he seems to have grown up without direction, without love, and without ever having absorbed any fixed sense of moral values”
        
        Family life → Came from a broken home. Mother lived a life of debauchery “liquor had blurred the face” and “soured the soul.” Only real connection was to his father who he built resentment towards. “Learned to despise her”
        
        Salvation army, abused terribly to the point where he almost died. “The Black Widows were always at me”
        
        Siblings lived a ‘cursed’ life, with both Jimmy (older brother) and Fern (older sister) killing themselves.
        
        “suspicious and distrustful of others, tends to feel that others discriminate against him”
        
        During his time in the salvation army he was racially abused unceasingly, “Hating, hated, half-breed”
        
        Sexually assaulted at his time in the army “but the queens on ship wouldn’t leave me alone”
        
        “his ability to separate the real situation from his own mental projections is very poor”
        
        “An incessant conceive of voyages”
        
        “and still, despite recent reverses, deemed possible by both—a skin-diving, treasure-hunting life lived together among islands or along coasts south of the border.”
        
        “After all, such a rich assortment of ventures had been discussed. Prospecting for gold, skin-diving for sunken treasure—these were but two of the projects Perry had ardently proposed”
        
        “It was all “pretty silly,” just “kid stuff.” Nevertheless, the game generated a treasure-hunt excitement, and presently he, too, succumbed to the fun, the fervor of this quest for refundable empties.”
        
        “an ever-present, poorly controlled rage”
        
        “He could slide into a fury “quicker than ten drunk Indians.” And yet you wouldn’t know it. “He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at or listen to,” Dick once said. For however extreme the inward rage, outwardly Perry remained a cool young tough, with eyes serene and slightly sleepy”
        
        “Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion” (Willie-Jay, analysis of him)
        
        “few close emotional relationships with other people, and these have not been able to stand small crises”
  - - - Perry outwardly shuns religion, partiularly Catholicism
        
        "It was one of these beatings, one he could never forget ... that the parrot appeared, arrive while he slept ... A bird taller than Jesus yellow as a sunflower" a warrior angel blinded by nuns, with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they pleaded for mercy ... then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to paradise.
- - - - Dick then goes on to assert his innocence – he’s convinced, at this point, that he never killed anyone. He claims that Perry wants Dick to die – “He’s plain determined that if he goes I go.” Dick reflects on capital punishment, and decides he’s not against it. “Revenge is all it is,” he says. “But what’s wrong with revenge?”
    - - His criminality is reinforced by the fct that he is well-liked among the criminals meaning that his persona is akin to those who comitted similar crimes