Crimes Change Personality and Relationship With Friends and Family - Essay
Crime refers to a behavior that is prohibited by law owing to its detrimental impacts on the victims and the society at large. Whereas different communities and jurisdictions have a standardized definition of what constitutes a crime, the underlying factor is that crime can be defined by deviant behavior that violates social norms. It arouses huge social disapproval from the majority of the people. This definition distinguishes the quality of the behavior from the outcomes of the behaviors. Therefore, an act is considered a crime due to the adverse impacts that it has on the population. This definition is pegged on the sociological definition of crime that highlights the consequences of the action. The deviant behavior can, therefore, be labeled on an individual or an action. This paper will attempt to explore the issue of crime from the perpetrator’s perspectives. The paper hypothesizes that as men commit more and more crimes and try to cover up their evil activities, it affects their personality and their relationship with family and friends. This is relationship with family and friends essay that will synthesize three different sources in the quest to find the impacts of crime from friends’ and families’ relationships.
The crime is like a loop of actions because after the compilation of one crime a criminal has to hide his crime in which they have to commit another crime to cover the first crime, then it becomes part of that person that how they became a criminal. Attempts to cover crime from friends and families is a daunting task that may adversely affect the population. This is the case in some of the characters in the following books: First is Macbeth by William Shakespeare who decides to see the future and that future made him this devil who has done so many crimes that it’s now his nature. Second is Okonkow in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, where Okonkow accidentally murders his son which is a crime against the earth Goddess and now he is a criminal in the Umuofia tribe. An unintentional accident made him a criminal and now he has to live with it. Third is Francis from Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta in which he gets involved with other women and keeps betraying Adah. He taunts Adah and passes harsh comments against her which is also a crime, eventually affecting their relationship. The three characters are examples of individuals who committed the crime that in turn adversely affected their relationships with friends and family members. The section below will explore the characters in more detail in the quest to build a better understanding of the outcomes that befell them after they indulged in crimes.
Macbeth’s downfall came at the highest point of his life due to his desire for seeking a higher power. Macbeth, a tragic protagonist, caused suffering for himself and others by creating distress and committing murders in the quest to satisfy his hunger for greater powers. His acts of being evil started when he was convinced by his wife Lady Macbeth to act on the prophecy. One of the prophecies was that he would become a king and thus he acted on it in the quest to prepare a path for the prophecy to become true. Macbeth's minds were poisoned by the evil Lady Macbeth, even though she was motivating her husband to work in what he felt in his best interest. The weird sisters or the witches are primarily accountable for setting the idea that King of Scotland would be him in his head. However, it is in Macbeth's decision to make this idea happen and fail at the end of the tragedy. Due to Macbeth's idea of becoming the king of Scotland, the curiosity of how to achieve it comes into the play. One may not understand if Macbeth was doing the right thing after he met with the witches. Macbeth gradually trusts more on the witches’ prophecies as the play progress. Slow corruption of his character can be attributed to the deceiving and evil witches. According to Shakespeare, driven by their sense of guilt Macbeth created his misery. He commits more murders as a result of being insecure about his actions. The killing of King Duncan would never have made him think without the influence of witches. Irrespective of the witches, it is more realistic to believe that Macbeth’s ambitions, Lady Macbeth and his responsibilities were as a result of his downfalls. However, they had the authority to influence the power to his control at the end of the play.
Macbeth’s downfall is his mistake and the outcome of his universal choice and not because of his fate. Sometimes hero’s downfall may be a result of an accident, but they cannot be the single contributing factor. For instance, Macbeth’s downfall was his whole culpability. He allowed herself to be influenced by the witches’ insight. Macbeth’s downfall can also be attributed to being done out of pure annoyance. Macduff fled from Scotland to England and this outraged Macbeth, since he wanted to keep a close eye on him and ensure no problem caused. Nevertheless, Macbeth orders the killing of all Macduff’s entire family and households because Macduff ran away. The killing of the family was driven by Macbeth’s anger and therefore contributed to his downfall. Banquo did not allow to be dumped even though he heard the same foretelling and therefore Macbeth would have followed the same footsteps. Instead, he acted upon it and chose to accept it. Macbeth utilized the greatest part of the tragedy in moral indecision. He decides his actions even though his wife Lady Macbeth was the originator. Overall, his actions harmed his relationship with his family as they did not support his decisions. This is a good example of how families adversely affect the relationship with families and friends. Macbeth speaks of his 'thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical'. Macbeth did his crimes because his desire for the throne increased so much after the three witch’s prophecy that he decided to kill his brother to fulfill his fantasy.
In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the fear of weakness and femininity coursed through Okonkow’s veins the entirety of his life. Not only was he afraid to be seen as weak but he was afraid to feel weak, to feel like he was becoming his father. Not only was Okonkwo ashamed of his father, but he despised everything about him. Everything he ever loved, Okonkwo hated. Those things included being gentle and idleness which is the opposite of the period before indulging in crimes. Okonkwo was never affectionate towards his loved ones and he never was gentle with them. All of this, because of his poisonous masculinity. Firstly, Okonkwo’s toxic masculinity causes him to disown and despise his father. Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, was a weak and destitute man. As a result of Unoka being unable to support his family and witnessing how inadequate his father was, Okonkwo grew to loathe him. Okonkwo, at a young age, prospered as a farmer. Despite his young age, he had earned a status in his community as one of the greatest men of his time. Okonkwo used his hatred of his father and fear of being seen as weak as motivation to work alongside his wives and children day after day. At the end of Unoka’s life, he had lost his status as one of the greatest men in the community. He lost his title and was heavily indebted before his demise. Unoka’s death not only caused Okonkwo to feel ashamed, but to abhor his father even more than he already did. Unoka died of the swelling, an indication that he had angered not only men but also their goddess. He was denied the tradition of the first and second burial, being left, decomposing in the Evil Forest above the ground. Unfortunately for Okonkwo. The author attempts to give the audience a little background about Unoka in attempts to explain his behaviors. However, in line with the definition of the term crime, he had already lost his status as an honorable member of society. Okonkwo was determined to achieve his goals and worked vigorously to reach them. Okonkwo. This caused a rift in his relationships with his wives. Furthermore, as a result of Okonkwo’s toxic masculinity, he repeatedly abused his wives emotionally and physically. He “ruled his house with a heavy hand”. Okonkwo had no patience for laziness and gentleness, not even with his little children. However, his temper was more directed at his wives. “Okonkwo failed in his duty as a father by not being a perfect role model for his children. His preference was for honor over love and affection”. This is yet another depiction of a character whose actions led to the destruction of the relationship with the loved ones.
In Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen, Adah had to fight against her husband, Francis’ ideals of what a Nigerian wife should be like. When Adah wrote her first manuscript she didn’t come home to a supportive husband but a husband who burned her manuscript, Emecheta states: “You keep forgetting that you are a woman and that you are black. The white man can barely tolerate us, men, to say nothing of brainless females like you who could think of nothing except how to breastfeed her baby”. Adah was in constant turmoil with her husband despite her being the breadwinner of the family. Francis is trying to control Adah and have her continue to live under his shadow. This society believes that the role of a wife is to simply to be a caretaker, Adah challenges that belief that women are only good for bearing children and taking care of their husbands by not only taking care of the household but holding down the family financially.
Francis was starting to merge into the stereotypes of his time that colored people couldn’t prosper in life because he told Adah that she couldn’t succeed because of her race. Francis is also very sexist because he thinks men are superior to women no matter how valuable the woman might be to the household. Francis wanted to suppress Adah’s dreams as a writer so she doesn’t gain too much freedom from him and used the excuse of “what would my family think” against her. Francis displays more insecurities than Adah because he doesn’t have much going for him. Adah didn’t conform to social norms used to knock her down such as her race, gender, and marital status when Francis would try and control her.
On the other hand, it can be said that a person commits crimes to fulfill his or her wish, and not treating a person equally is also another crime that is not based on wish but simply because when one thinks that the other person is not equal to them. However, that does not mean that crime has to be done to accomplish what the person wants. When Macbeth heard about the prophecy from the witches about him becoming the king he killed his brother to fulfill what is called a desire that aroused in him of becoming the king which led him to the crime of killing his brother. Also with Okonkow he didn’t want to murder his son but to keep his pride he did it anyway. Francis treated Adah harshly and taunted her because he believed white people were superior and they don’t belong in the same group of people. All these crimes were just done because of one didn’t think they were equal, and other crimes include pride and desire.
