As I continue to read this family tragedy, I can't help relate it back to King Lear since that is what we just watched in class this week. A whole family is completely destroyed after being heavily influenced by their internal issues. King Lear asks his daughters to express their love for him and becomes mad when Cordelia fails to do so. He banishes her in a fit of rage. Now, none of the Gilley kids were thrown out of their house, but Billy did run away multiple times. After one particular time when Bill Sr. threatened to kill Billy Jr. and went to go get his gun, Billy believed him becuase "Bill sounded angry enough and had threatened to kill his son often enough that Billy wasn't inclined to wait around and see what happened. Before his father came after him he took off across the field and hid himself in a shed behind Kathy Ackerson's house" (66). In these next chapters, it goes back in time to when Linda and Bill Sr. were newlyweds fresh out of Vegas at a extremely young age. It is explained that whenever there were problems in the relationship, Bill Sr. "ran off with another girl leaving Linda and the baby (Billy Jr.) for months without any money or any food" (58). I can't imagine the type of person that would run off and abandon the family they were supposed to protect and love. But then again, nothing in this book is exactly 'the norm.' Some of the flashbacks and accounts of what happened are so apalling its hard to imagine it really did happen. The main thing that contradicts this apparant hostile and violent 18 year old boy, is the fact that he was deeply affectionite for his younger siblings. This is shown in a confrontation with his mom. Billy says, "I told my mom she couldn't expect me to stop protecting Jody" (62). So this completely shows another side to Billy's apparant violent personality.
I guess the only main idea to be pulled out of this next part of the narrative, is that there are two sides to everyone, and even though yes, Billy did a horrendous act, at the time he sincerely thought that he was doing something for the common good and 'freedom' for himself and surviving sister. I can't even imagine having to suffer that kind of abuse at home and I think its terrible that these young kids that were our age, had to endure everything they did. This doesn't however, give Billy permission to kill his family. Sure, Jody and Billy both fantasized about life without their parents, but Jody was never serious about it, and never realized that Billy was. The ending to this chapter leaves us with a cliffhanger about Billy's life in prison. It will be interesting to see his side of what happened.
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2 comments:
From you blog it sounds like Billy is a crazy man who has some values that are placed incorrectly in the priority list. However i can respect him for having these values because from what ive read it seems like his childhood would've been difficult for anyone to live through nontheless with morals. Even if Billy did kill his parents i think he isn't as bad as some people would make him out to be.
I like how you bring up the "good side" of Billy. Often times, one can hear a story of someone commiting atrocious actions and immediately mark the person as "crazy" or "bad". However, you talk about the reasons Billy did what he did and the things that influenced him. What he did wasn't right, but if you look at the person's history or reasonings, you see that they aren't completely evil.
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