Find a source related to the monster you are choosing to write your causal analysis on. This will be a good source to begin understanding the causes or effects of your monster. Summarize the text keeping causality in mind. What reasons are they giving for the monster?
Answer these questions as well:
- What monster are you writing about?
- Are you focusing on the causes or effects?
Requirements: About 250 words, summary and response to the article/post/news/etc; aka text.
Comment below with a link to the text and your summary and response.
Professor Ramos' Blog 
For my causal analysis, I decided to write about Dracula again, only because I have done so much research on it for the Monster Evaluation paper. When it comes to either causes or effects, I chose the former because it is easier to describe how Luke Evan’s Vlad becomes Dracula at the end of 2014’s Dracula Untold. While searching the web for an article on Dracula, I saw one on U Chicago News (for the University of Chicago) which talks about a history course being taught on that campus, strictly dedicated to the famous vampire. In this course, students are taught on Vlad the Impaler himself and his impact on the European continent “before reading Dracula and watching film adaptations” (Wenzel). After reading the article, it seems as if the class’ main purpose is to not educate students on the legend of Dracula but to talk about the real Vlad’s life and rather, how that famous legend came to be. As seen with the article’s first picture, on Halloween, some students even dressed up as Dracula! The course’s professor, Jonathan Lyon, says that “In the United States, there are not that many medieval historians who study Germany and especially not central Europe” (Wenzel). Lyon’s main argument is clear – American colleges do not educate students on central Europe that much, so what better way to do this than to teach a course on an aspect of pop culture that is beloved by America.
I chose this article because this class’ objective is somewhat similar to that of my final paper – to explain how Dracula came to be. The only major difference is that they are talking about Dracula as a whole while I am just writing about one version of the character.
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/history-course-dracula-goes-beyond-story-bloodthirsty-killer
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One of my sources that I am using is called Aileen Wuornos: Killer Who Preyed on Truck Drivers by Marlee MacLeod. Since I am writing about Aileen Wuornos who is America’s first female serial killer, I decided to write about the causes as to what slowly turned her into a serial killer. I found this scholarly article about her life from growing up with an abusive grandfather, to how she got pregnant at fourteen and was sent away to have the baby. Then how she was blamed for her grandmother’s death so she was kicked out and had to live in the woods; while she did that she was doing drugs and already sleeping around to earn money just to eat.
Once she turned sixteen she hated having to live in abandoned cars in the woods or living under shards of wood while it was winter, so she started to hitchhike to Florida and during that journey she became a prostitute just to get to that state. She claims that she slept with 250,000 men, which is a claim that actually might be the only thing that was actually true about her past as a prostitute; this means that she must’ve slept with 35 different men a day which would’ve took her 20 years to do. Prostitution was how Aileen found her victims, she would need a certain amount of money, or need a car and would find a man that had what she wanted and would kill him for it. She claims that the police knew she killed her first victim, Richard Mallory, but they let her keep killing because they wanted to turn her into a serial killer.
The Link: http://members.chello.nl/w.kuijpers3/literature/Wuornos.pdf
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In 1910, Fish fell into a sadomasochistic relationship with a 19-year-old man by the name of Thomas Kedden. It wasn’t long before Fish took things too far. He brought Kedden to an abandoned barn and proceeded to torture him for two weeks.
Fish tied Kedden up and cut off half of his penis. Yikes. Gross. He recounts: “I shall never forget his scream, or the look he gave me.” Fish had planned to kill Kedden and cut his body into pieces, but the fear of being caught overtook him. Instead, he disinfected the wound, covered it with petroleum jelly, gave Kedden a kiss, and fled. Whatever became of Kedden is unknown. There is something seriously sick and wrong with Albert Fish and I am very interested into looking at what caused him to become such a horrible monster.
https://gizmodo.com/the-disturbing-case-of-cannibalistic-serial-killer-albe-1713762422
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For my causal analysis, I am writing about Hannibal Lecter the NBC version or the character. I have decided to focus on the effects that have caused such a monster to emerge. I have found this website that goes a bit into the numbers of serial killer that have faced some type of childhood abuse that vary from physical, sexual, physiological or neglect. It does explain that because these are serial killer that were captured and incarcerated there is a possibility that the numbers are skewed as they could be lying to bring attention to themselves. This source focuses on how this childhood trauma is a possibility for them becoming serial killers.
There is also work to be done as mentioned in the article if the type of abuse is connected to the type of killer they become. By this, I mean that if they are organized or disorganized serial killers. Organized serial killers are those that kill quick and kills those that have a low risk endangering them to get caught. Disorganized are the opposite in that they take risks in killing people that will have a higher chance of tracing the murder back to them. Overall, at the end of this article it does mention that besides the point that childhood abuse may or may not be more prevalent in causing serial killers, in the ones cause there is a high percentage of them that faced such troubles and therefore much be taken into account when trying to get a ‘read’ on the serial killers behavioral patterns.
link: https://www.crimetraveller.org/2015/07/serial-killers-childhood-abuse/
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The monster I am writing about for my causal analysis is Elmer Wayne Henley. He was an accomplice in the Houston mass murders back in 1974 that saw over 28 young men kidnapped , tortured, raped, and murdered. Although they might have been mostly hurt by Dean Corll, Henley played a big part in their captures and often murders as well. He has been convicted and is still serving out his 6 life sentences in Tennessee. However he only admits to one murder, that of Dean Corll.
He sounds like a horrible person, but was he just a scared young kid who got brainwashed into helping Corll? That’s why I will be focusing on the causes that led up to the kidnappings and murders. He was just 15 when he met Corll and needed extra money to support his mom. He believed Corll to be a pimp and when he later found out the truth it was too late to go back. There is not a good enough excuse for anything he did, but it is interesting to look behind the evil face of a killer and find a scared young boy.
https://www.oxygen.com/candyman-killer-dean-corll-elmer-henley-real-killers-behind-netflix-mindhunter
Rachel Thompson
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