by Lois Duncan
“You don’t have to have something ‘wrong with you’ to need help in understanding things,” Mrs. McConnell said. “Listen—I want to read you something.” She drew a folded paper from her shirt pocket. “This is a description of a certain personality type.”
She began to read: “ ‘This individual has a behavior pattern that brings him repeatedly into conflict with society. He is incapable of significant loyalty to individuals, groups or social values. He is selfish, callous, irresponsible, impulsive and totally unable to experience guilt. His frustration level is low; he cannot stand to be thwarted. He tends to blame others or offer plausible rationalizations for his behavior.’”
She paused. “Sound familiar?”
When Susan did not answer, her mother continued. “There’s more. ‘This individual is unique among pathological personalities in appearing, even on close examination, to be not only quite normal but unusually intelligent and charming. He appears quite sincere and loyal and may perform brilliantly at any endeavor. He often has a tremendous charismatic power over others.’”
“Now, do you recognize someone?”
“It’s a description of Mark,” Susan said.
“It’s a clinical description of a psychopath.”
Susan stared at her mother. “Is that what the psychologist told you?”
“The first part of the description is a definition published by the American Psychiatric Association. The second part is paraphrased by the psychologist.”
“What will be done about him?” Susan asked. “What will be done about all of us?”
“Our lawyer has requested that Mark be tried separately,” Mrs. McConnell told her. “In fact, he will probably face three trials—one for his part in Brian Griffin’s death, one for the possible murder of Mrs. Ruggles, and one for what he attempted to do to you. The lawyer feels that he may be able to get the charges against David, Betsy and Jeff reduced to second-degree murder. I hope he can, as that might make the difference in whether they will serve time in a prison or in a juvenile facility.”
“And me?” asked Susan.
“You weren’t actually involved in what took place in the mountains,” Mrs. McConnell said. “That fact is in your favor. If you agree to turn state’s evidence, you might be let off. The lawyer is working on that now. Otherwise, the charge will probably be manslaughter.”
“Does ‘turning state’s evidence’ mean I will have to testify against the others?”
“You will have to go on the stand and tell the truth,” her mother said. “No matter how hard it is, you will have to describe exactly what happened. Your part, and their part. Mark’s part. You will have to tell it all.”
“I don’t think I can,” Susan said.
“You can, and you must.” Her mother reached over and took her hand. “You’ll do whatever has to be done. Meanwhile, Dad and I think it would be a good idea to get some family counseling to help us all through this difficult time. Will you agree to that?”
“The whole family?” Susan asked.
“We’re in this together, aren’t we? Whatever happens to you happens to all of us. Perhaps we’ll grow closer through this, somehow. Perhaps we’ll all understand each other better. There must have been something lacking in our life together if you needed someone like Mark to fill in the gap.”
Mrs. McConnell got to her feet, giving Susan’s hand a quick squeeze before releasing it. “You’ve stayed in this room long enough. Get your hair combed and come downstairs. I want you to come with me when I go shopping for curtains.”
“White ones?” Susan said with an effort.
“Something darker, I think. Maybe taupe.”
After her mother left the room, Susan sat a long time unmoving. When she rose at last it was to go over to her desk and open the top drawer. She took out an envelope and withdrew from it a sheet of paper.
Attached was a note:
I found this in his briefcase. He didn’t have a chance to give it back to you. It was signed “C.G.”
How long ago it seemed that she had written this final song for Ophelia. It was almost like reading a poem written by a stranger.
Where the daisies laugh and blow,
Where the willow leaves hang down,
Nonny, nonny, I will go
There to weave my lord a crown.
Willow, willow, by the brook,
Trailing fingers green and long,
I will read my lord a book,
I will sing my love a song.
Though he turn his face away,
Nonny, nonny, still I sing,
Ditties of a heart gone gray
And a hand that bears no ring.
It was the last verse that he had underlined:
Water, water, cold and deep,
Hold me fast that I may sleep.
Death with you is hardly more
Than the little deaths before.
Below this, in Mr. Griffin’s small, precise handwriting, there was a message:
MISS MCCONNELL:
IT PLEASES ME TO SEE THE GROWING MATURITY OF YOUR WORK. IT IS INDEED THE “LITTLE DEATHS,” THE SMALL, DAILY REJECTIONS OF OUR WELL-MEANT OFFERINGS, THAT RENDER THE SOUL LIFELESS. IT IS AN ADULT THOUGHT, WELL EXPRESSED.
I AM GLAD THAT YOU ARE A JUNIOR, FOR IT WILL ALLOW ME ONE MORE YEAR IN WHICH TO WORK WITH YOU. I LOOK FORWARD TO WATCHING YOUR CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT AS A WRITER AND HOPE THAT I MAY BE ABLE TO CONTRIBUTE TOWARD IT.
BRIAN GRIFFIN
If she had been the Susan of two weeks before, she would have wept, but this new Susan had cried herself dry of tears.
She replaced the paper in the drawer and went to comb her hair.
Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR
Young adult author Barry Lyga sat down with
Lois Duncan to ask her all about
Barry: I know that when you were updating KILLING MR. GRIFFIN you considered changing psychopath to sociopath, but chose not to. Why not?
Lois: The terms sociopath and psychopath are often used interchangeably. We’re talking about a personality disorder that people are born with. Neither psychopaths nor sociopaths are capable of feeling remorse or guilt. They appear to lack a conscience and have no regard for the rights or feelings of others. Those traits often surface by the age of fifteen.
One of the first signs is often cruelty to animals, and I used that in the chapter which has a reference to Mark setting fire to a cat. So we’ve got two terms for almost identical conditions, and the line between them is so vague, even psychiatrists find themselves arguing over which is which. When I wrote KILLING MR. GRIFFIN, I knew the term psychopath, and so I used it. Since then, I’ve had a chance to meet several people who actually have been diagnosed as sociopaths and so I felt a little more comfortable with that word because I was more familiar with it. I thought, Oh, well I’ll change it. However, I realized that in the book I had given a clinical description of a psychopath extracted from a textbook. So I thought I better not get myself into trouble by suddenly changing the term to sociopath. I don’t think we really know which Mark is, or whether it matters. He has this disorder and that is that.
Barry: What inspired you to write about such a character, and how did you go about researching it?
Lois: I’ve always been fascinated by why people do things and what makes them what they are. There were people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy—people who had absolutely no sense of guilt about what they did, performing horrible acts—and yet they were just as charming as they could be. They fit right in with society. My good friend, true crime author Ann Rule, had a desk right next to Ted Bundy’s and thought he was delightful. He’d even walk her out to her car after work to make sure she wasn’t mugged. When she discovered he was a serial killer, she was stunned. It’s a strange, fascinating and horrifying condition.
When we read about these people as adults doing atrocious things, we tend to forget that they weren’t always adults. They started out as children, and they grew up and they went to school with o
ther children. So we can look around us today and figure that we’ve got them probably in every school in the nation growing up right around the normal kids. They’re developing in that situation and they’re practicing the skills that they will later use as monstrous adults. So I thought, why don’t we see what one of them might be like as a teenager?
Barry: Did you find any sympathy for Mark at all?
Lois: No, I didn’t, because there was nothing inside Mark. That is one of the strange things about this condition. It’s not that the person himself is evil; it’s that he feels nothing. So he could do something evil, he could do something good; he would feel the same about both of them. This was one reason why, if you’ll notice, this book was written in third person, and I changed viewpoints in different chapters. So in every chapter we have a vision of Mark from a certain angle, but he appears quite different depending on who is looking at him and how that particular person feels about him.
I never wrote a single chapter from Mark’s viewpoint because I wouldn’t know how to get inside his head. I would have no idea of the way a psychopath might think, and I thought it would be interesting to have him as a chameleon. You see him changing depending on who is viewing him.
Barry: Well, now that you’ve said you couldn’t get into his head, I’m going to ask you to get into his head for a moment. Do you think he intended for Mr. Griffin to die?
Lois: No, I don’t think he did. I don’t think he cared if Mr. Griffin died or not. I think he wanted the thrill of the kidnap, and he liked the power he had over his followers, the way he could make his little band of robotic admirers do what he wanted them to do. He wanted a new adventure, and I don’t think he cared in the least what happened to Mr. Griffin. If his purpose was for him to be dead, he would have gotten a gun and shot him. He just didn’t care, and in a way that is even worse than if it had been a hate-inspired murder.
Barry: Readers often assume that whatever you write about actually happened to you, so did you have an English teacher that you didn’t like? Did you have somebody that you wanted to kidnap and leave up in the mountains?
Lois: No. I was very lucky. I had likable teachers. But Mr. Griffin wasn’t a totally fictional character. He was based upon the personality of a teacher that one of my daughters had in high school. That teacher was actually a woman, and she was a drama teacher, and she was very strict and demanded that her students do the best work they were capable of doing. She wouldn’t let them get away with anything, and they all resented her. Later it turned out that she had had more positive influence upon those kids than any other teacher they ever had. My daughter, after she had graduated and would come back home to visit, would go find this teacher and have lunch with her. She was grateful to her, but back in high school she was not. I used that type of teacher as the basis for Griffin, but, of course, I changed her to a man and changed the field of study.
Barry: I know a lot of readers also ask you if Mr. Griffin was David’s father.
Lois: No, Mr. Griffin wasn’t David’s father. There are lots of clues to indicate that he isn’t. The personalities of the two men are totally different—strict, over-conscientious Mr. Griffin and free-spirited, irresponsible Mr. Ruggles. And if Mr. Ruggles were still living right there in the same town, how could he do so without running into his wife or some of their joint friends at some point? Especially if he’s teaching at a public high school that all their children are attending?
In several places it’s mentioned that both men attended Stanford University.So, of course, they wore identical class rings. The sight of that ring on his father’s hand is a memory stored in David’s subconscious, which is why he reacts so strongly when he sees the same ring on Mr. Griffin’s hand.
Barry: In the book, one thing that we see repeated over and over is the characters being persuaded to do things by Mark because of some attraction or effect he has on them. Is that something you’ve seen particularly in teens? That they’re malleable based on somebody that they’re attracted to?
Lois: Absolutely. I think that is probably the cause of most of the trouble that young people get into. Peer pressure. They are easily swayed, and that partially has to do with the development of the brain. Certain parts of the brain develop at different ages, and the part that has to do with reasoning is one of the later parts to develop. That’s one reason that insurance rates come down when a driver reaches age twenty-five. That person is now considered more responsible for his own actions. So I think that peer pressure is a very, very strong element, not just today, but also back when this book was firstwritten. Very little has changed in regard to that over the years.
Barry: What about the characters of Susan and Betsy? These are the two primary female characters and they’re very different.
Lois: Well, I think they’re partially a reflection of their families. Look at Betsy’s mother and look at Betsy and you see a little version of that mother. Betsy is going to grow up to be just like mama.
Susan, on the other hand, is struggling with an inferiority complex. She’s not pretty and popular. She’s younger than her classmates, and I guess you could call her a nerd. Her family loves her but doesn’t understand what she’s going through. So she’s quick to leap at a chance to become one of an “in group,” especially when that group includes the boy she has a crush on. But her principles are intact because of her upbringing.
One thing that I think is important for fiction writers is the study of psychology. Back when I was teaching magazine writing at the University of New Mexico, some of my journalism students who wanted to move on into fiction writing would ask me for suggestions about what English courses they should take. I’d tell them, “Don’t worry about the English classes, because most of you are already good writers, but many of you don’t understand people yet. Take psychology classes. Try to learn what makes human beings what they are.” When I develop a character, I go back and develop that character’s entire background and the background of the family that character comes from. Even if I don’t mention those things in the book, I am aware of them. This way I know how that person is going to act in a certain situation based upon his or her background.
Barry: That’s fascinating. I didn’t know that you did all of that background work. That’s terrific.
Lois: Yes, I want to know why they do what they do, not just have them jump out and do it. Motivation is something I think you can get across much better in a novel than in a film.
Barry: Let’s talk a little bit about the “Song for Ophelia” in KILLING MR. GRIFFIN. Was that a deliberate symbolic choice on your part or was it just a case of “They’ve got to be studying something, so it might as well be Hamlet?”
Lois: In this case it was symbolic, because in Hamlet Ophelia offers Hamlet her whole heart, and he is the center of everything she does. She reads to him… oh I forget all the wonderful little things she does for him, but her whole life is centered around giving her heart to Hamlet, and he rejects each one of these thoughtful little gestures without any appreciation. That’s exactly what is happening with Mr. Griffin. He is giving everything he has to these students to try to make them into the best possible people they can be, and they are systematically rejecting each thing he tries to give them and resenting him for it. At the end of the book, in his letter to Susan, he says, “It pleases me to see the growing maturity of your work. It is indeed the ‘little deaths,’ the small, daily rejections of our well-meant offerings, that render the soul lifeless.” That’s one of the main themes of the book. These students were killing this man’s soul before they killed him physically.
Barry: There are two moments in particular in the book that resonated for me in a modern context really well. There’s a great indictment of parents in the book when Jeff’s dad says, “All you have to do is open the paper or pick up a magazine and you see a bunch of messed up kids in trouble. It makes you wonder where the parents are while all that’s going on.” And it’s just terrific because, as he’s saying this, his own kid
is involved in a kidnapping and murder!
Lois: Well I think that a typical reaction of many parents is, “Everybody else’s kids are in trouble, but ours are so perfect. All those other parents are just hiding their eyes from what’s going on in their own kid’s life. Can you imagine such an irresponsible parent?” Here, the parent who’s condemning the others is doing just the same thing. I thought it was quite ironic. I rather enjoyed writing that scene.
Barry: I loved that moment. I actually laughed out loud and had to put the book down for a moment when I got to that. The other thing that really resonates for me right now is just the general tenor of Mr. Griffin’s complaints and issues with unprepared college students and their attitudes. That could’ve been transplanted directly into a modern context and now it has been, and I was wondering what your own education was like?
Lois: Well, I went through high school and I did well. I wasn’t good at things like math, and chemistry was just horrible, but I was very good at anything related to English. I studied hard and I took my school life seriously, and I did very well in high school. I was offered an English scholarship to Duke University. My parents wouldn’t allow me to take it because they didn’t think it was fair.
Barry: Not fair?
Lois: Because they had saved up and had enough for my college education, and there were plenty of kids who didn’t have that money, and they didn’t think it was fair that I should accept the scholarship when it ought to go to someone who needed it more. That should tell you something about my parents.
Barry: Yes, that tells me a lot.
Lois: I went to college for one year and fell in love and got married and dropped out. I didn’t get the rest of my formal education until I was in my forties. At that point I was teaching for the journalism department at the University of New Mexico and they had forgotten to check my credentials. I was hired to replace the magazine writing teacher in an emergency situation, because she became very ill and couldn’t teach her class. Tony Hillerman, the writer, was a personal friend of mine, and he was the chairman of the journalism department at the time. He asked me if I would step in and take her place, and so I did without anyone doing a background check.