Week 5 - Armanjot Bhangu - A04

Armanjot Bhangu

Section: A04

Week #5

For this week, I chose to read “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence”, written by Darrell Y.
Hamamoto. In this book, specifically Chapter 12, Hamamoto goes into detail about the reasons behind
murder and why it’s a related to other expressive emotions such as love and friendship. According to
him, “...murder and killing as expressive behavior also take different forms, characteristics, and stem
from varying motivations according to time, place, and circumstance”. He relates this idea by describing
the various types of murderers along with any characteristics they have. Additionally, he attempts to find
the motivations these people have by trying to identify why they kill the people that they end up choosing
to kill. Hamamoto also describes how mass murderers are predominately white males and how their
choice to murder may have come from “resentment against non-white minorities”. This all leads to the
terrifying thought that murders like these have actually become more more and common as time has
gone on. The idea that people like this could be walking amongst us is a scary one. The story I found
to be the most unsettling was that of Jeffrey Dahmer, who not only was a cannibal and ate his victims,
but also seemingly targeted exclusively people of color. It’s an unfortunate truth that we have to live
while people like this exist, and therefore it’s an injustice that all of us have to live with and keep in the
back of our mind.

QUESTION:

Is there any way to identify serial killers in the making or is it only something we find when it’s too late?

REFERENCES:

Hamamoto, D.Y. (2003). Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.