By the end of the play, we must ask ourselves did Jonny and Mikie, really deserve to be brutally murdered by Eli? Are they children born 'evil'? Or are they subjugated by 'evil' backgrounds or 'evil' circumstances? Such as growing up in fear of someone. In some ways we must compare these character's circumstances to that of James Bulger's murders.
As children do they really understand what is the difference between wrong and right? Well I would certainly say yes they do at the age of 12 and so did Thompson and Venables at the age of 10 when they were asked the same question by a psychiatrist. However it is a more modern perception that the Bulger incident was as a result of the boy's backgrounds rather than of an 'evil' within themselves.
Thompson and Venables came from very similar walk of life; both were struggling in school because they played truant, they'd been lumped together in the year below their age and both had parents who had separated. Thompson and his six brothers, it said, grew up 'afraid of each other'. And when their father left them, a Lord Of The Flies mentality descended on their home where each would fight, physically, for power.
In relation to our LTROI characters, we discussed how Jonny could be part of a bully chain that follows : Aggressive Father → Jimmy → Jonny (→possibly Mikie)
It could also be that the boys, similarly to Thompson and Venables, come from homes where their parents are separated. Therefore, Jimmy and Jonny, and maybe even another brother, may also have Lord Of The Flies mentalities at home.
Scarily about the Bulger case, Jon Venables' father would often rent out videos consistently containing ultra-violence and pornography. Although Mr Venables claims that murder Jon never saw these videos, the last video that he rented out before James Bulger was abducted, splashed with blue paint, and killed under the wheels of a train was 'Child's Play 3'.
The 'star' is a demonic doll called Chucky, which comes to life in a military academy. He abducts the youngest cadet and tries to kill him under the wheels of a fairground ghost train. But it is Chucky - dressed in toddler's dungarees, his faced splashed with blue 'war games' paint - who gets horribly mutilated.
If we refer to Jonny and Mikie's so-called Lord Of The Flies mentality; what if one, or both, of the boys has seen the 1963 Lord Of The Flies film, which works with our timeline, and so take on the roles of Jack and Roger and hence befriend 'Piggy'/Oskar, as we discussed Mikie and Oskar were definitely previously friends at a summer camp, and then go on to bully him, physically beat him and attempt to drown him. This is similar to the way that Piggy, from Lord Of The Flies, is murdered and falls into the ocean.
To conclude, I would like to refer back to my question; did Jonny and Mikie really deserve to be brutally murdered by Eli? In doing so I almost feel obliged too ask did Thomson and Venables deserve to be sentenced to life imprisonment? With retrospect, I imagine people reading my previous statement disgusted complaining that the acts of Jonny and Mikie and that of Thomson and Venables were not atall alike however my reasoning is that if you morally weigh up all the specifics in each case, the only real difference is that Thomson and Venables were successful in their crime, I believe Jonny and Mikie to be just as equally brutal. Therefore, if a judge is able to conclude yes, Thomson and Venables were rightly to be the first children tried in an adult court and did deserve to be given a life sentence then my answer is also yes, Jonny and Mikie knew exactly what they were doing and sadly deserve to be brutally murdered by Eli. However, in both cases, the situtation could have, and should have been avoided with better parenting.
Sidenote-It seems others also see the Jonny-Venables similarities as on the website Devian art, one artist 'Art-Ate-My-Heart' depicts Jonny Forsberg as the above Venables image which is usually used to present the boys as evil by the media. - http://art-ate-my-heart.deviantart.com/art/Jonny-Forsberg-213867565
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