Sick and Twisted: Going Inside the Minds of Criminals in John McNally’s “the Magician” and Joyce Carol Oates’s “where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Caitlin Deveau
Professor Faulise
English 1110-18/ Essay 3 (Researched) Sustained Literary Analysis
29 April 2015
Sick and Twisted: Going Inside the Minds of Criminals in John McNally’s “The Magician” and Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
The first thought that comes to mind when thinking of a magician or a young man is certainly not one of fear. That is the exact emotion that should have flowed through the bodies of Katy Muldoon and Connie though the first time they crossed paths with the characters who would conclusively turn out to be their doom. In John McNally’s “The Magician” and Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” readers go through a whirlwind of emotions as sixth grader Katy Muldoon and 15-year-old Connie are abducted. An enigmatic magician takes Katy from her math class, while Arnold Friend seizes Connie from her own home, yet both girls ironically have the same fate of never being seen again. Clearly, both the magician and Arnold Friend could be categorized as some of the most atrocious criminals. Although, while people are able to recognize that the actions of the two are sinful, many are not capable of comprehending how people can do such things. Society is drawn to killers such as these men like a moth to a flame, out of profound inquisitiveness. This interest stems from the fact that the acts criminals commit are so foreign and intriguing. The ruthlessness of these killers is mind-boggling to society because their behavior seems so out of the ordinary. By using Zelda Knight’s “Sexually Motivated Serial Killers and the Psychology of Aggression and ‘Evil’ Within a Contemporary Psychoanalytical Perspective,” “The Problem of the Criminal Mind,” and James Greene’s “Motivations of a Murderer,” readers will be able to understand the reasoning for the acts committed by the magician and Arnold Friend, the motivation of criminals, and relate the two short stories to actual criminal cases. Ultimately, the thoughts and actions of the magician in John McNally’s “The Magician” and Arnold Friend in Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” allows readers to gain insight into the psychology behind the minds of modern day criminals.
For most of society, kidnapping and murder are concepts that people cannot wrap their heads around. The mere idea of such horrendous acts can send shivers down someone’s spine. To the magician and Arnold Friend though, these acts are habitual. Zelda Knight views serial killers, such as the ones in the stories, as those who have “lost the boundaries between fantasy and reality” and have “disconnected from humanity” (Knight 21-22). What makes serial killers this way is many different “neurological, social, physiological, environmental and psychological factors” (22). A serial killer’s background is a prime example of the social, environmental, and psychological factors that turn them into who they are. A decent number of serial killers come from “dysfunctional families of neglect and abuse,” where the father may have been removed and the mother may have been dismissing or very dominating (30). The roles that the parents then play for these children is not a beneficial one because when a child is young, they must learn that some of their needs will not always be met and that they will, in turn, need to satisfy them on their own. In cases like these though, a child will never learn that, leaving him “abandoned” and “deprived” (29). These are the children that can grow up to become serial killers, seeing as the normal “healthy assertiveness” most children have transforms into “hostile aggression,” which then converts a seemingly normal child into a “less stable, less confident, more fragile, and threatened” being (29).
Many people in society view the world differently than serial killers do because when they were younger they would have encountered a mix of “negative, traumatic events” as well as some “positive and enriching” ones (29). Serial killers, on the other hand, would have only experienced the “negative, traumatic events,” leading to a “weak, narcissistic and fragile sense of self” which “[lacks] confidence” and is “fearful of a revengeful world” (29). With this view of the world it is no wonder why these criminals have a level of aggression and sadism that has advanced past the “point of origin” into a “complex version of self” that is maintained by “an enduring sense of internal and external danger” (31). This extreme level of aggression helps people to better understand the motivation behind committing such gruesome acts though. That hostility is aimed at “the silent but endlessly haunting ghosts of past tormentors” (32). Therefore, by attacking their victims, serial killers direct their feelings at “those who symbolically represent the early tormentors,” and “unconsciously re-enact their childhood impotence, pain, and helplessness” in a merciless delusion of taking revenge (32).