Character Analysis: Murder As A Fine Art

English CPT – Script

I’m Stefan Rebello. The book I chose was “Murder as a Fine Art” written by David Morrell.

Summary – The book starts off with a mass murderer killing a shopkeeper and his family. This murderer is known as “the artist of death”. Not only does he butcher the bodies but he also admires the crime scene after. The lead detective on the case is Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan finds clues that lead to a famous writer named Thomas De Quincey who has written many essays. One essay in particular called “On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts” is an important part of the crime because it mirrors the murders that happened the previous night. Someone obviously is using the essay as an inspiration for the murders. The essay makes
Brookline was calling it on himself when he murdered all those people and did it in such a painful manner. “The artist swung the mallet. His arm was muscular. The mallet has a broad striking surface. It rushed through the air and struck the shopkeeper’s skull. The force of the blow made a dull cracking sound, comparable to when a pane of ice is broken. As the shopkeeper groaned and sank, the artist struck again, this time aiming downwards toward the body, the mallet hitting the top of his head. Now the sound was liquid.” (11) How can you live with yourself knowing you did that to a man and his family. Towards the end of the book Robert Brookline gets trapped of by Ryan and is bleeding to death, Brookline knows what he must do as he lies over his dad’s burial. “”He was already dyeing, and yet he felt the compulsion to use his knife. It’s not precisely a stake through his heart.” Father said. “But I imagine Brookline intended it to be the same as what ultimately happened to his father.” – De Quincey” (338) This can be related to “The Death of a Salesman” because Willy Loman also dealt with matters that he is not proud of. Willy Loman was a bad father and cheated on his wife. He also kept all his lies to himself even though everyone knew them. For this he hung himself. Willy is the same as Robert Brookline because they bot ended their life with misery and
We never want to get in trouble and take the punishment, so we blame others. Just like Robert Brookline tried to blame Thomas De Quincy for the murder of the shopkeeper and his family. Brookline knew it would be easy to pin the murders on De Quincey seeing that he wrote essays mirroring the murders. “Forty-three years after the murders, and the Opium-Eater writes about them as if they happened yesterday. - Ryan”(73) This is exactly what Robert Brookline wants. He wants De Quincey to be arrested for the murders. Another one who likes to blame people is Lord Palmerston. Lord Palmerston arrested Thomas De Quincey for the murders even though he had no clue who did it. He had to make the people on Britain feel safe, and what better way then to arrest someone for the murder. “”When I ordered you to arrest the Opium-Eater, my motive was to assure the population that events were under control,” Lord Palmerston continued, as if Father were not in the room. “Putting a logical suspect in prison gave us time to discover the actual murderer while calming the citizenry.””(231) Lord Palmerston didn’t care that the real killer was on the lose, he just needed to make everyone feel safe. I can relate to this situation because when I was little. I stole 10$ from my sister. When she found out it was missing I played along as if I knew nothing. My sister knew I was lying when she asked me if I took. I got so scared and ripped the