Leslie Moreno Moreno 1
Professor Macklin
English 114A
24, October 2011
Criminal Minds
Would you be able to tell what someone is thinking? Could you spot a serial killer as he walked right passed you? A person’s compulsion to kill is not written on their face, it’s in their minds. Criminal minds is a group consisting of seven people, Aaron Hotchner the team leader, David Rossi as the profiling expert, Special agents Emily Prentiss, Dr. Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan, and Jennifer Jeareau, and technical analyst Penelope Garcia. They are the members of the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), and their job is to profile uncatchable crooks for the most unthinkable crimes. It is a show about what goes through a serial killers mind; what makes them start to kill. The only way to stop them is to get into their minds. You can never tell what another person lived through his/her life, and sometimes how one grows up effects they way they grow up to act like. There is a trigger in all of us, a darkness that cannot be contained; to some that darkness comes out and they lose their heads, they go insane and without knowing become psychopaths.
A psychopath is defined as, “a person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts.” It is a mental illness that people sometimes get when they have had a stressor in their life such as the death of a loved one or the abusiveness of a parent. Every criminal has a starting stressor that causes them to go insane. Penelope Garcia said, “I believe humanity was born from conflict. Maybe that’s why in all of us lives a dark side. Some of us embrace it. Some have no choice. The rest of us fight it. And in the end, it’s as natural as the air we breathe. Some point, we’re forced to face the truth…ourselves.” I agree with her, each of us fight that darkness in us and sometimes it creeps out but we somehow manage to bring it back in. Serial killers reach the limit where their inner darkness comes out and they cannot control it, some people can just fight it more than others. Elise Cabot quoted, “evil endures a moment’s flush and then leaves but a burnt up shell.”
“What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today,” William Glasser. Most of the time the problem doesn’t just start with the serial killer all of a sudden wanting to kill, they get triggered; and the saddest part is that their trigger ends up being the one thing that is suppose to save us, love. Madeleine L’Engle said, “When we were children we used to think that when we grew up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability; to be alive is to be vulnerable.” When we are young our parents are the most important people in the world, they are the ones we are suppose to trust the most. In the episode “Remembrance of things past” is an episode that made me think of this quote. This episode was about a serial killer they named “The Butcher” and he escaped the two heads of the team years ago so when the sudden kills start again they begin to think that maybe it is a copy cat. As the episode continues you see that it is a father-son team; the father killed before the son was born so when the son was born he still continued to kill and the wife found out. The wife was then the main target and the son was blinded by how he grew up that they actually helped the father capture his own mother so the father would kill her. The son grows up and ends up being the accomplice of the father. I felt sad for the son because he had no choice but to obey by his father’s rules. He grew up with his father being the dominant one that he couldn’t escape the fear he had of his father leaving him. It makes me think of all the children that had to grow up in a house hold like that. “Children begin by loving their parents. As they grow older they judge them, sometimes they forgive them,” Oscar Wilde.
“All things truly wicked start from innocence, “said Ernest Hemingway. Some serial killers try to help others and it ends up going the wrong way. In season 7 of criminal minds in the episode “From childhood’s hour” the killer is kidnaps a boy named Bobby because bobby’s mother has depression. He cares for the boy but he tries to get an “okay” from the kid to kill his mother. Once the kid gives the “okay” he kills the mother. He tries to do the same with two other kids and the thing is that when he was young his mother was in depression. He thought in his mind that his mother jumped off a bridge and killed herself, when in fact he pushed her off. His mind couldn’t take the truth so it turned the story around so that he would remember something else. Even thought he tried to do the right thing he ended up doing the right thing in the wrong way. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” Orson Welles.
When you fall in love you believe that that one special person will never leave your side, sometimes you become to obsess that when they break your heart you seek revenge. Jean Racine said, “A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.” In season 6 of criminal minds the episode “Devil’s Night” A man starts to kill people by burning them alive, he was in an accident where he was burned by most of his body. He was currently with the woman of his life, but when she found out he probably wouldn’t survive she left him and it left him devastated. He was so devastated that he began to take it out at the people who separated her from him. He got to the point where he found out where she was living and decided to go confront her. The family members struggled to keep her safe but they just couldn’t. She came out to talk to him and he was furious, as he began to yell a little boy came running out, as he ran he yelled, “mommy.” He was heartbroken to see she had had a child, at that moment agent Hotchner came in and told the woman to tell him the truth. She looked at him and told him that the little boy was his son. The man was in deep shock that he dropped the flame and asked what the boys name. The little boy reached for his father and touched him on his face, the part where his face was burned up. He didn’t mean to kill those people but because he let his darkness get to his head he let it consume him to the point where he had the urge to kill. Thomas A. Kempis said, “Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above strength, pleads no excuse for impossibility, for it thinks all things are lawful for itself and all things are possible.”
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them,” Galileo. I won’t say that criminals should not be punished for their crimes, of course they should. There is no way that a criminal shouldn’t be punished but it also counts why the criminal did what he did. It might seem pointless to people but when you listen to the story of the tragedy of another person’s life you can’t help but feel a bit sad. At first I was just like everyone else, I thought they should receive the death sentence, but when I started watching criminal minds I began to think about what the criminals go through. Some people when they watch the show they watch it only because they like a character playing or the action in the series, I wanted them to listen. I want people to listen to the stories and think about what actually made the criminal kill. Some of the stories are probably stories that are no reason to kill, but most of them are sad stories that make you feel bad and grateful that you have a good life. It makes you think twice about the life you have, it made me think twice I used to think my life was useless but I do have a good life. I may not be in love or have many friends but I’m grateful for the family that raised me. I couldn’t even imagine going through what the criminals went through, or even one of my family members to go through. What if a family member went through the same thing? It is the saddest thing to think about. There may be innocent people who also have to pay for the crimes they did not mean to commit or didn’t commit. Like the children of serial killers, they have to live in fear the rest of their lives seen as the child of a monster. The wives have to live in terror hoping and praying that one day their child does not end up in the same footsteps as their father’s. It is horrible to think an innocent child will suffer for the rest of their lives because of their father or even mother. I may be over thinking all of this but my emotions and heart show me that life is unfair and sometimes we do things we ourselves don’t fully understand. “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks,” Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
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