Extreme Passion

             I have a problem with interviews. Not interviews, per say, but a question that tends to make its presence in them: “Who are you?” I know where I come from, I know what I like to do, I know what I want. But someone asks me who I am and besides my name, I know nothing of how to respond. This is why Willie-Jay’s dissection of Perry as a person is so remarkable. He doesn’t straight out say who Perry is, he slowly cements bricks of observations and facts to build the edifice of Perry, and in such a poetic way, too:

            "You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw "will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt  for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself - in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he  is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements."    

            I am in love with this ‘chaplain’s clerk.’ Maybe he’s spouting a bunch of bull, but I highly doubt it. In the beginning of the novel the narrator talks about Perry’s frustration with happy people that inspires in him an urge to hurt them. The hungry passion that isn’t sure where its appetite lies was a great description and example of Perry’s inner self. I myself find that I’m so ready to absorb the world, I’m hungry for knowledge and language and the fizzling stars of love. I know what the growling in my consciousness is due to, though. I know what I want. And so I’m at peace with myself. Perry is smoldering passion of desire and hunger but said hunger has no fixed target. It is like a person that wants do to so much and yet can’t figure out what it is exactly he wants to do. They are fireworks exploding inside a suffocating box that leaves them to burn inside: explosive emotional reaction. His hatred for people that feel happiness, the urge to cause them pain, is probably due to the fact that he himself can’t feel it. Life is leaving him out of said chemical bliss inside his brain so exerting it on others is his way of coping: misery loves company. But in doing this he’s just making himself more miserably, killing any possible chance at being satisfied. 

            When Dick and he entered the Clutters’ house to do exactly what the whole novel was leading up to, Perry’s “legs trembled; the pain in his knees made him perspire. He wiped his face with a paper towel. He unlocked the door and said, "O.K. Let's go."” His nervousness is palpable. We kind of feel empathy for Dick because there’s something more human about him, some turmoil inside of him. Willie-Jay’s former words resonate with the reader and each time Perry does something that leads one to the conjecture that he is not all together logically aware of his actions, of himself, his humanity is restored. I wonder every time about his past. Why he is the way he is.

            So they do the deed and eventually people find the bodies. Larry Hendricks testifies and says, “ The bed, that's where we found Mrs. Clutter. She'd been tied, too. But differently - with her hands in front of her, in that she looked as though she were praying.” It’s strange, but there seem to be religious references throughout the novel and I have the suspicion that there is something that runs deeper into that. The religious song playing when Mr. Clutter is getting his will and at the same time playing in Dick and Perry’s car was perplexing. It was a connection between the two, but I wondered why God, why that specific connection. And then we see the nuns’ stockings and now Mrs. Clutter in a praying position while she died. God is a unifying entity. While all of the events are so against what he symbolizes, there is still his overlooking presence. Mrs. Clutter accepts him and that makes her death more peaceful. I still have yet to figure out just what it means throughout the expanse of the novel.

            It is as Hendricks is testifying that the officer questioning him compares the deaths to puzzles:

            "Like those puzzles. The ones that ask, 'How many animals can you find in this picture?' In a way, that's what I'm trying to do. Find the hidden animals. I feel they must be there - if only I could see them.”

            It’s frustrating, feeling like something is there, at the tip of your tongue, behind your clouded senses, and you can’t see it. But the satisfaction that comes accompanies the final clarification makes up for it.