The question of what might trigger a person to commit a murder has been an ongoing investigation for centuries. The idea of killing another person, let alone one’s own parents is, to most people, baffling and horrifying. Lizzie, in Sharon Pollock’s play, Blood Relations, is a curious character that murders both her parents using a hatchet. Based on the 1982 event in Massachusetts, Pollock creates her own account of the Lizzie Borden murder, but still remains true to historical details. A number of events lead up the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Borden. Asking Lizzie to get married is the first trigger, which leads to her lust for revenge after her father kills all of her pigeons; although she decides to spare her own life, Mr. and Mrs. Borden’s lives
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Borden is a traumatic event for Lizzie, bringing out a lust for revenge in Lizzie. The once close father-daughter relationship between Mr. Borden and Lizzie is permanently altered by Mr. Borden’s impulsive act. Though it would be convenient to end her own life so as to not have to bear the pain of losing the only things she truly loved, Lizzie finds there is another solution. After talking to Emma and trying to convince her to stay, referring to her father, Lizzie …show more content…
He didn’t care how much he hurt me and you don’t care either. Nobody cares. (52)
Lizzie wants her father to hurt the same way he made her hurt. William Ian Miller author of Eye for an Eye captures the sense of what it is to get even with someone. It is to take someone down as they have done to you, and to have the satisfaction of them sharing the same humiliation that you endured (Miller 17). Since her father has taken away something she loves, she believes that taking something that he loves would be suitable revenge. Killing Mrs. Borden would give her the satisfaction of killing something her father loved in return.
After the murder of Mrs. Borden, Lizzie realizes that the only thing standing in the way of her freedom is her father. What Lizzie wants more than anything is not only independance, but also the money required to do so. Though she appears to love her father, his body offers her more dead than it does alive. With the family’s inheritance being such a large amount of money, Lizzie would be able to afford to live on the hill like she always wanted, or live on the farm with birds and animals. Shortly after Lizzie murders Mrs. Borden, she says to Bridget,
LIZZIE. He would never leave me the farm, not with her on his back, but
Borden is a traumatic event for Lizzie, bringing out a lust for revenge in Lizzie. The once close father-daughter relationship between Mr. Borden and Lizzie is permanently altered by Mr. Borden’s impulsive act. Though it would be convenient to end her own life so as to not have to bear the pain of losing the only things she truly loved, Lizzie finds there is another solution. After talking to Emma and trying to convince her to stay, referring to her father, Lizzie …show more content…
He didn’t care how much he hurt me and you don’t care either. Nobody cares. (52)
Lizzie wants her father to hurt the same way he made her hurt. William Ian Miller author of Eye for an Eye captures the sense of what it is to get even with someone. It is to take someone down as they have done to you, and to have the satisfaction of them sharing the same humiliation that you endured (Miller 17). Since her father has taken away something she loves, she believes that taking something that he loves would be suitable revenge. Killing Mrs. Borden would give her the satisfaction of killing something her father loved in return.
After the murder of Mrs. Borden, Lizzie realizes that the only thing standing in the way of her freedom is her father. What Lizzie wants more than anything is not only independance, but also the money required to do so. Though she appears to love her father, his body offers her more dead than it does alive. With the family’s inheritance being such a large amount of money, Lizzie would be able to afford to live on the hill like she always wanted, or live on the farm with birds and animals. Shortly after Lizzie murders Mrs. Borden, she says to Bridget,
LIZZIE. He would never leave me the farm, not with her on his back, but