CATCHER IN THE RYE: LITERATURE’S INFLUENCE ON SERIAL KILLERS

Bardo claimed he had to “eliminate what he could not attain” (Johnson). When he ran away from her house and towards a bus stop, he threw the copy of The Catcher in the Rye that he was carrying that night in a nearby alley, almost as if he was disposing of the weapon he used to kill Rebecca Schaffer’s death resulted in numerous antistalking laws, not only in California but across the country.

Some additional literary works that have been possibly identified as a catalyst for extreme, violent behavior are Rage by Stephen King and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. Rage is one of King’s earlier works that he wrote while still in high school in 1965 The book's main premise is about a student who brings a gun to school and kills multiple other students and teachers It is unlikely that this type of novel would even be published without controversy in these days and even if it was, it would likely be banned from schools before it even hit the shelves. King acknowledges this point, in a short essay he wrote in 2013: "I suppose if it had been written today, and some high school English teacher had seen it, he would have rushed the manuscript to the guidance counselor and I would have found myself in therapy posthaste,” King wrote. “But 1965 was a different world, one where you didn’t have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane and there were no metal detectors at the entrances to high schools (quoted in Adwar)

Unfortunately, a couple of decades after the release of the book, King had to ask his publishers to take it off the market This was due to four separate shooting instances where all of them linked in some way to the novel. The perpetrators seemed to be either reenacting scenes from the book or were visably inspired by it. The first was in 1988 when Jeffery Lynne Cox decided to hold his classes hostage, outwardly claiming he was inspired by Rage. The second was a year later in 1989, when a seventeen-year-old, Brian Pierce, decided to hold his class of eleven hostages for nine hours, beginning at 9 a m , and he released his final classmates around 5 p m Pierce only stated that he wanted to talk to his father and claimed that he would not hurt anyone. “State Police detective Bob Stephens, who negotiated all day with Pierce, said he feared Pierce would try to kill himself since he seemed to be carrying out the scenario of the Stephen King thriller Rage During a search of Pierce's room at home, police found a paperback copy of the book, in which the lead character is shot by police'' ("Kentucky Student"). The third was almost ten years later in 1996, when Barry Dale Loukaitis, a fourteen-year-old, from Washington, killed his Algebra teacher and two of his classmates. Barry even stated during his trial that he tried to model his life after the main character in Rage, by killing his Algebra teacher The final instance was when a freshman in high school, Micheal Carneal opened fire against a prayer group in his school, killing three and injuring five, a copy of the novel was found in his locker that day (Adwar).