510
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
monstrous power over the convict. Chessman certainly died with
"dignity," and that was the best he could do for himself, even if his
kind of fearlessness is a tragic example of strength. Even his last
words make much of the crippling "courage" he had lived by.
"When you read this, they will have killed me. I will have ex–
changed oblivion for an unprecedented twelve year nightmare.
And you will have witnessed the final, lethal, ritualistic act. It is
my hope and my belief that you will be able to report that I
died with dignity, without animal fear and without bravado. I
owe that much to myself."
The woe of his crimes and the waste of his life lay upon
Chessman's soul. He feels that society does not understand the
young criminal.
It
is his mission to explain. "It is the story of a
grinning, brooding, young criminal psychopath in definitely willing
bondage to his psychopathy." The fate is personal, mysterious.
"My father had failed to grasp the real reason for my many
clashes with authority. He would never understand what drove
me. He never would
be
fully aware of the jungle."
And what drove him? What was the jungle? "I ventured
the thought that perhaps after one spends a while in a jungle world
he gets so he cannot or does not want to believe there is anything
better, or that it is attainable in any case. Maybe hate has a
lot to do with it. Hate for everybody, for himself."
"But there are periods of self-doubt when you know your–
self for what you really are--an angry, hating, fighting
failure.
Usually then you curse your doubts and blaspheme the imagery
[sic]
of the self you see."
His history is appalling. "Yes, I have been in reform schools,
jails, and prisons most of my life. Yes, I had committed many,
many crimes and had ample warning of what to expect if I kept
on. Yes, I had kept on nevertheless. No, I was not guilty of the
crimes for which I was sentenced to death. I was not the red
light bandit. . . . Yes, I would say I was not the red light bandit
even if I were."
The Thing is describable but inexplicable. "I was one of
the trees in this dark and forbidding forest. I knew what it meant
to live beyond the reach of other men or God. I had 'proved'
everything I had felt the need to prove: that I couldn't be scared
