512
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
The bandit instead had them perform
fellatio .
..."
It has been
widely suggested that Chessman's execution was society's punish–
ment of its own perverse sexual wishes or deeds.
The mystery and force of Chessman's character were prob–
ably more outraging than the sordid crime itself. This older
juvenile posed the question for which we have no answer. Why had
he been a hoodlum at all? His cockiness,
his
loquaciousness,
his
cleverness, his energy, his talents only made his life more myster–
ious and more repulsive. His command of the word repelled the
jurors. One of them twelve years later told a reporter that Chess–
man was just "as vicious as ever." When asked how she could
know this, she replied, "After all, I seen his picture in the papers
and he still has that same mean look, don't he?" He went on
talking, defying, acting as his own lawyer, writing books, trying
society's patience more and more. His life represents our defeat,
our dread of the clear fact that we do not know how to deal with
the senseless violence of the young. It is not too hard to understand
organized crime, but how can you understand two young boys who
kill an old couple in their candy store for a few dollars? In our
rich society, the smallness of the sums for which people are killed
shows a contempt for money as well as for human life. The
nihilism at the bottom of Chessman's fate, his brains, what the
newspapers called his "evil genius," made him a fearful and
dreadful example. His cleverness undid him. His fight for his life
was stubborn, cocky, pugnacious-and defiant.
In a sacrificial death, the circumstances that the mass fears and
dreads and violently condemns may arouse involuntary feelings of
wonder and grief in others. There was something almost noble
in the steely, unyielding effort Chessman had made to define and
save himself. He was a real person. He had breathed life into him–
self. One could only say that when he died this poor criminal
was
at his best.
It was dismal to think
his
struggle counted for
nothing. His ordeal was a tangle of paradoxes. He had spent
twelve years in the death house because the law hesitated to deny
him
every possibility for reversal of the sentence. Those were hor–
rible years, awaiting the answer. Would it have been better if he
had been executed six months after his sentence? No, it would not
have been better. And yet twelve years are twelve years, a unique
