Not_All_Criminals_Are_Psychopaths

------------------------------------------------- Not all Criminals are Psychopaths Not all psychopaths are criminals nor are all criminals psychopaths. Donald Black had stated in his book, “What is very disturbing about psychopaths, besides their sense of special entitlement, is the complete lack of empathy for normal people, for "antisocials (psychopaths) seem to lack a conscience, feeling little or no empathy for the people whose lives they touch...the antisocial effortlessly resists all regulation, unable to see beyond his self-interest or to adopt standards of right versus wrong.” (XIII) Flannery O’Connor’s, fittingly dubbed character, The Misfit is labelled as a psychopath. He has a questionable past, of which he was blamed for the death of his father and was later sent to prison, he then escaped and killed anyone who he crossed paths with. Such individuals would be considered psychopaths, and follow the description of Black’s statement. However, the Misfit would be a flawed psychopath if he was regarded as one because he showed empathy in front of those he was about to murder, displayed that he took no pleasure in killing, and had lost his rationality when he was beginning to form a connection with the grandmother. Despite how the Misfit showed traits of a psychopath, he should not be considered as one, but rather just as a criminal with unresolved issues. ------------------------------------------------- Work Cited Black, Donald. Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial Personality Disorder. USA: Oxford University Press, 2000. When one is about to kill their quarry they should not consider showing them empathy because if they did the predator in turn would become the prey. O’Connor’s Misfit, at first impression, did a very good job at hiding his feelings. The Misfit was depicted as a raging psychopath, who had escaped from prison, killing anyone that crossed his path. When one actually meets him, he is a reserved man, with a humble aura, and treats his company with respect. Anyone who suspects him to be a psychopath would feel like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It seems like an act, but it is his actual real character. The Misfit shows a spectrum of feelings before his victims, from regret to embarrassment. He reddened with anger when Bailey yelled at his mother, and hunched his shoulders in embarrassment while he apologized to the grandmother and the daughter-in-law of his lack of a shirt. “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you'” the grandmother said ... The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. “I would hate to have to,” he said. The Misfit shows here that he would rather not have any casualties. The people he had killed were probably the ones who had recognized him. The Misfit did not trust society, since they were the ones who had placed him in prison. He was sent to the prison in the first place because he was charged for murdering his father. The Misfit himself denies that he killed his Father, saying that he had actually died of the flu and that he could prove it with the grave of his father. It was apparent that the grandmother would do anything to stay alive, even forgiving him after he had killed her family. It was ironic, that society had locked him up in prison for killing his father with no proof, while when he actually did kill the grandmother’s family, she forgave him, which symbolized divine redemption, something that he knew that even God would not give to him. The sudden emotion in him gave the Misfit a moody character. While the Misfit tries to isolate himself from society, he is still human, so he seeks company. The Misfit travels in a group, it is apparent that he is the leader of his small group of three. He orders the other two to kill while keeping his own hands clean. In fact, all the people who were supposingly killed by him were probably not killed by his own hands at all, but rather by his partners. He does not even see his partners killing their victims. In the story he orders them to be taken care of far away from him. When he killed the grandmother, it was of pure instinct from the rush of emotion he had received from the grandmother. It was described in the story that the Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed, pale and defenceless-looking. The grandmother was probably the first kill he had done himself. As the saying goes, the first kill is the hardest.