Saturday, February 28, 2009

9 Lives - Chapter 9, "Let's All Give the Doc A Mighty Hand"

I have always loved psychiatry, especially criminal psychiatry. I'm not sure why. But serial killers have always fascinated me, most notably the ones that I believe really were sick. In the interest of political correctness, I won't name any names, but I really would like to know what compels a man to eat another man when he's not starving to death; or to chop up a fair-skinned woman and save pieces of her in his freezer. It's this kind of abhorrent behavior that completely escapes my level of understanding, and I find myself asking the same question over and over again whenever I read about it:
"Why?"
In this chapter, I thought of a psychiatrist who's bored with his life. He follows the same exact routine every day, and wonders what the point of it all is. In an effort to relieve his boredom, he takes a post in a hospital for the criminally insane and meets a truly fascinating patient. In an effort to "cure" the patient, he makes the mistake of getting emotionally involved...
Obviously, since this is the last chapter, I can't give too much away. But I will say that it will probably require the most rewriting of any of the chapters because so many details are joining the plot every day that need to be accounted for in the final act. I like that it has a nice rhythm, and is told mostly through dialogue.
-JJ McMoon
2/28/09

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