Personality
Nelson was the antithesis of popular, Robin Hood-like gangsters of the Depression era, which included Dillinger. A hot-tempered man, Nelson did not hesitate to kill lawmen and innocent bystanders alike. For example, in the March 6, 1934 robbery of the Security National Bank & Trust Company in Sioux Falls, Nelson was enraged by the sound of the alarm, demanding to know who set the alarm off, setting him apart from Dillinger and Van Meter, who continued working to the alarm as if it hadn't gone off. Upon seeing a motorcycle cop, Hale Keith, pull up alongside the bank, Nelson leaped onto a railing and fired a deafening burst through a plate glass window, striking Keith four times and severely wounding him. He reportedly screamed "I got one!" after shooting Keith.
One of the high profile outlaws of that era, Nelson and Clyde Barrow were accused of killing more than 50 police officers between them. Paradoxically, Nelson was also a devoted family man who often had his wife and children with him while running from the law. After Dillinger's death in July 1934, Nelson became Public Enemy Number One.
Read more about this topic: Baby Face Nelson
Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“A personality is an indefinite quantum of traits which is subject to constant flux, change, and growth from the birth of the individual in the world to his death. A character, on the other hand, is a fixed and definite quantum of traits which, though it may be interpreted with slight differences from age to age and actor to actor, is nevertheless in its essentials forever fixed.”
—Hubert C. Heffner (1901–1985)