Lyrics:
His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bedFolding John Wayne's t-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things, rotting fast, in their sleep
Oh, the dead
Twenty-seven people
Even more, they were boys
With their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God
Are you one of them?
He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed
He kissed them all
He'd kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands, quiet kiss on the mouth
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid
Now the story...
Also, a clip from a movie based on Gacy. Just a bit disturbing...
Reflection...
...This is a song is based on true events: the story of a serial killer and rapist, John Wayne Gacy, Jr. But this song also reminded me again of "A Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. The last stanza of the song, "And in my best behavior/ I am really just like him/ Look beneach the floor boards/ For the secrets I have hid". The man in A Tell-Tale Heart hides the old man he murdered beneath the floor boards just like Gacy did with his victims. "I am really just like him" is a bit of an exaggeration in my opinion. Hopefully "the secrets I have hid" aren't comparable to Gacy's. This is a confession, or a statement of guilt. Conscience in a psychological sense creates feelings of remorse for going against one's morals. I studied Ted Bundy, another notorious serial killer, who in his final interview said he had deep regret and guilt. But it seems that unlike Bundy, Gacy never felt guilty about any of his victims. The video clip above says that Gacy's last words before his death by lethal injection were, "Kiss my ass". Does this mean Gacy is an exception? Does he really have absolutely no conscience? I thought this at first, but after reading about his childhood, I began to make sense to his reasons. Like the song says, "His father was a drinker/ And his mother cried in bed", Gacy was abused verbally and physically by his father. His mother would try to protect him but that would only make Gacy's father yell at him for being a "mama's boy" and say he would "probably grow up queer". He was molested by a family friend at age nine, but could never tell his father that. At the beginning of this project, I decided I wanted to look into the reasons why a person will go against their conscience in the first place. Now I've come to realize that Gacy's conscience must have been corrupted during his extremely rough childhood. His morals were altered at age four when his father began beating him. Obviously, these aren't excuses for what John Wayne Gacy did, but rather an explanation as to why he might have done it...
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