Chapter 27 - Plot

Plot

On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman shocked the world by murdering 40-year old musician and activist, John Lennon, outside The Dakota, his New York apartment building. Chapman's motives were fabricated from pure delusion, fueled by an obsession with the fictional character Holden Caulfield and his similar misadventures in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. In one instant, an anonymous, 25-year old, socially awkward and mentally unstable fan of The Beatles, who had fluctuated between idealizing Lennon and being overcome with a desire to kill him, altered the course of history.

A man whose painfully restless mind thrashes about uncontrollably between paranoia, sociopathic lying and delusion is summed up in such character revealing comments as "I'm too vulnerable for a world full of pain and lies" and "Everyone is cracked and broken. You have to find something to fix you. To give you what you need. To make you whole again."

From his lies to cab drivers (identifying himself as The Beatles' sound engineer) to his socially unacceptable behavior around Jude, a young fan he meets outside The Dakota, to his argument with paparazzi photographer Paul, Chapman keeps the psychoses bubbling below the surface as his grasp on reality deteriorates into a completely misguided rage.

Read more about this topic:  Chapter 27

Famous quotes containing the word plot:

    Trade and the streets ensnare us,
    Our bodies are weak and worn;
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    And we despoil the unborn.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

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    John Dryden (1631–1700)

    The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)