Pure Evil and Second Chances

What one should take into consideration when watching these movies is the degree of evil the characters either a. possess or b. are surrounded by. Which characters were motivated or influenced by evil? How does their past influence their current decision making? These are fundamental questions one should be asking as one watches these movies. In Capote such answers are much clearer and definitely lean towards true evil especially in the case of the actions of Perry Smith, sole murder of the Clutter family. In Freedom Writers, the characters lean more towards the good, but surrounded by great evil on all sides. They are also heavily influenced by the deaths and killings of their friends and family due to frequent gang activity and over all violence in their neighborhoods. Although Perry Smith and the students in the movie have very similar pasts the big difference between them is the decisions they make and the fundamental fact that, in the case of the Freedom Writers someone cared about what happened to the kids. Though all make decisions greatly influenced by the evil in which surround them, the students in Freedom Writers can hardly be considered evil in comparison to the sociopathic and psychotic killings of Perry Smith, in addition, all hatefully made decisions are made up for in the end by an overall consensus of their own ideas of what is right and what is right is what should be done.

Perry Smith was an interesting man at the very minimal. A man with a troubled childhood and an equally troubling adulthood could easily be compared with many of the students of Wilson High School of the Freedom Writers story. Intellectually sophisticated and emotionally disturbed, Smith was raised by an alcoholic mother and an abusive father. His mother and sister abandoned their father in Juneau, Alaska escaping his abuses to the greater San Francisco area. When his mother died he was put into a Catholic orphanage where he was repeatedly abused physically and emotionally by the nuns because of his chronic affliction of wetting his bed. He was eventually removed from the clergy-run orphanage to a Salvation-Army orphanage. Though even with this move, Perry was not free from torment. Here one of the caretakers apparently tried to drown him. With such a violent and unstable childhood how could he not grow to have a trouble psyche?

Smith had a history of violence. While serving in the Army during the Korean War, he was often reprimanded for excessive drinking and fighting with Korean civilians and other soldiers. Though with such a history of violence no one could have predicted his turn from petty crimes and minor violent crimes to a mass murder? His spontaneous decisions to murder the Clutters support him being a sociopath. A sociopath is someone who does not take into consideration how their actions might affect others, complete disregard for others rights and liberties when in conflict with personal agenda. The Clutter family massacre was and obvious complete disregard for the families lives and actually, was unnecessary considering the lack of profit from the burglaries and would have faced minor charges for breaking and entry and burglary, if caught that is. These murders were spontaneously decided. Perry did not pre-meditate them which is worse. Such a poor and rash decision over a measly $20 can be attributed to his mental unhealthiness, this Psychotic Sociopath.

The level of true evil is limited among the protagonists of Freedom Writers. All evil actions and intentions are redeemed in some way or form by the end of the movie. The situation in Long Beach is a curious one with the situation in Wilson being one of its greatest examples. Wilson is one of the biggest high schools in Long Beach. The two largest are Poly and Wilson. Wilson is located in a very safe, suburban neighborhood while Poly is located downtown on the edge of the ghetto. As the movie explains the district is implementing a new system that busses in kids who come from less fortunate and ethnically diverse backgrounds and neighborhoods to different high schools to “diversify” and hopefully, better the learning environment for everyone. This inevitably brings the problems and rivalries of the downtown neighborhoods to the bubble gum, happy-go-lucky, suburban Wilson high school. Even today it is plagued by gang activity and associated problems. Although most, if not all the problems presented in the Freedom Writers are inspired by race and ethnic rivalries there solutions are all dealt with eventually through education. For example Eva Benitez’ testimony originally accusing a Black teen of murdering another Cambodian teen, then rightfully accusing her Mexican boyfriend of the murder, changes because of the education from the writing course; ensuring her that doing what is right is more important than protecting “one’s own”. In addition their issues are tackled much earlier in the students’ lives than Perry Smiths. Through education and the escape writing provided these kids they were able to better cope with their situations and deal with their individual struggles accordingly. They were able to positively tackle their troubles, an option Perry wasn’t given, not out of malice, but sheer bad luck. These kids are luckier than he was. But at the same time, these kids are not Psychotic Sociopaths either. Though many were at one point capable of something as terrible as murder, they were saved by the art that is writing.

Perry Smith received no education higher than that of grade school. Though processing a sophisticated mind, he was in turn, a very uneducated man. Maybe if the proper education would have reached him earlier in his life, he would have not been the infamous protagonist of In Cold Blood and a mass murderer but such speculation is unsustainable. The fact is he did not receive an education and met no one that was as truly good and at the end of the day actually cared as much as Erin Gruwell. The kids of Freedom Writers were lucky to have met such a person genuinely dedicated to good. If one were to go to the root of the matter, many of those depicted in Freedom Writers could have well ended up like Perry. Maybe not on death-row, but in jail, dead, or lost on the streets, everything taken away and with nothing less to lose which I believe is the handle. The one thing that separates Perry from these kids is that someone believed in these kids, they got a second chance, Perry on the other hand, was barely given a chance, a chance with the odds stacked against him, and unfortunately these miserable odds prevailed.