Psychological Explanations Of A Novel

“Neccessary Evil” Essay, Research Paper

Plot

Necessary Evil is a story about a 10-year-old boy who witnesses the murder of his grandfather, his closest friend and confidant, from the hands of two drunks during a driving altercation. After Billy McIlvain.s grandfather.s death, his family life falls apart even worse. His mother falls deeper into alcoholism and his father does not want anything to do with the family. Billy.s mother attempts to commit suicide but Billy intervenes and calls the paramedics. Billy.s father leaves shortly after. After years of withdrawal of love from his mother, Billy ends up murdering his mother and is sentenced to prison for thirteen years. When Billy gets out of prison, he is filled with an obsession to .close the circle.. Billy. life is filled with death and his thoughts seem to be calm and coherent and then suddenly change t slightly bizarre thoughts and rationales for committing certain acts.

Criminal Behavior

Billy commits a number of criminal acts through out the novel, but only a few will be explained. At age 16, Billy murders one of his grandfather.s killers and later kills his own mother during an argument. The murder of a man named Charles Spencer, who Billy believes is the father that abandoned him, and his family will also be discussed. Billy murders the family by stalking them and carefully planning the executions. Dressed up as a Federal Express courier, he kills the family in their own home using a gun and sexually assaults the dead wife, which is his first experience of intercourse.

Theories

Psychoanalytic Theory

The character in the story suffers much abuse in the early stages of his life at home and later as a juvenile. This abuse drastically affects the way Billy acts as an adult since the moral values Billy was supposed to learn never take shape.

Billy is fixated on the Anal Stage since he is consumed with the beauty of fire and finds it exciting and arousing. At one point as an adolescent, Billy almost sets fire to a girl.s hair in church because he is compelled with the rush and excitement of the thought of burning her hair. After this incident, Billy often set fires in dumpsters at his school and around the parks he lived by. Billy gets sexually aroused watching the flames and heat being emitted from his fires.

Billy also has a fixation in the Phallic Stage since he does not have a strong superego. The lack of the Superego is mainly due to the fact that Billy has never resolves his Oedipal Complex. Whenever his mother had an intimate partner, Billy would feel betrayed and threatened and was likely to get into a violent rage. The final violent rage against his mother resulted into her death. It becomes clear that Billy is suffering from the Oedipal Complex near the end of the story when he murders the family of Charles Spencer, whom he believes to be his father. After he murders Spencer.s wife, he sexually assaults her and commences intercourse with her. Billy acknowledges that Spencer.s wife greatly resembled his mother but continues with his actions. Prior to that incident, Billy had no experience with sexual intercourse because he wanted to wait for the right woman. Before Billy kills Spencer, Billy cuts off Spencer.s genitalia and forces Spencer to chew on his own organs. While this is occurring, Billy is sexually aroused by what is occurring. This clearly illustrates that Billy subconsciously feared his father castrating him as a child and as an adult, he wants to have revenge on his father for terrifying him and for being a rival for his mother.s affections.

The lack of a strong Superego causes Billy not to have any strong moral values and causes Billy to act in ways that only bring immediate gratification. Therefore Billy is not successful in learning proper ways to behave and continues to commit acts, whether criminal or not, to satisfy his current needs.

Eysenck.s Theory

In accordance with G factor, Billy seems to have a lower IQ than the general population. He did poorly in high school before he was sent to prison and as an adult, is employed as a security guard and newspaper courier. Then again, these medial jobs may be due to the fact that Billy did not have the opportunity to finish high school and did not have the family support he needed to be encouraged to do greater things with his life.

Billy seems to be an ambivert since he does not have high levels of sociability and at the same time he is not ethical. Billy leans more toward the extravert side than the introvert. He becomes agitated quickly and this is apparent when he murders his mother. She scolded him for interrupting her date and Billy went into a rage and could not control his actions. He ended up hitting her with a dumbbell on the head and stabbing her over a hundred times with a pair of scissors. This was not the first time Billy lost his temper, which caused a death. When he was sixteen, he killed one of his grandfather.s murders with a knife and dumped him into the river. While these murders were taking place, Billy.s thoughts became short and rapid which leaves the impression that his violent thoughts are basic instinct and he cannot control his actions.

On the Neuroticism . Stable scale, Billy is high on Neuroticism. Billy.s nature to be violent when he lost his quick temper was discussed earlier. Billy is quick to be obsesse