Why They Kill No Doubt Character Analysis

Lonnie Athens’ dynamic self strongly builds upon his ability to overcome the chance of him replicating his father’s violent behaviour due to childhood experiences and instead maintains strong moral beliefs with the support of external sources. He portrays the idea that the nature of the self was not born violent, instead it is greatly influenced by one’s surrounding. Lonnie Athens, from the biography Why They Kill no doubt comes from an undesirable violent family and experiences gun threats from his own father on a regular basis but luckily there are interventional forces that reduces the unimaginable stress and anxiety he undergoes significantly. Pete instils the idea to his son that you should never run, not in any case but to stand up and wait …show more content…
Lonnie’s ferocity made people leery of him, however Michael instead finds his humour and saw him differently. “A wise guy.” as Lonnie has described him. Michael’s house is like the other safe shelter he had besides his grandpa’s and he portrays his house as the “other side of life” in which led him to the understanding of things beyond dark violence. For instance, when his father chased him with a knife at two in the morning because he was trying to defend his tortured mother, his first instinct was to ran to Michael’s house. Feelings of self-contempt caused Lonnie to stand up against his father and even though he practices violence upon peers, it was evident that he still possesses clear morals as to what is the right thing to do under certain circumstances. Along with the soft forces from Michael’s family and his grandpa, Lonnie came to understand from such experiences that subjugation is selective within violent families and violent people like his father are not necessarily mentally ill. Instead there were logic behind the