“I am the bullet in the chamber.” Those are the now infamous words that appear in the 2011 Nike ad featuring the South African double-amputee Paralympic star, Oscar Pistorius. After making history at the 2012 Summer Olympics as the first double leg amputee to compete in the men’s 400 meters and 4 x 400 meters relay races, Pistorius, dubbed the “Bladerunner” in reference to his blade-like prosthetic legs, was charged on February 14 with the murder of his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, inside his home in Pretoria.
Even faster than his record breaking races, Pistorius has gone from being the personification of the adage “anything is possible” to labeled as a cold-blooded killer who allegedly shot at his girlfriend four times through a bathroom door, fatally wounding her with three of the bullets.
Aside from the mysterious fact that Pistorius acted with such calculated composure to what he believed to be a home intruder, this case sheds new light on an ever-present and yet equally ignored issue surrounding our daily lives. Perhaps it is not that Pistorius has a violent nature fed by a constant need to seek vengeance or enact justice, but rather a lack of control that can manifest itself in even our most innate behaviors.
When the news of this shocking murder was reported, I was finishing Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood for an English class, a book that depicts the true accounts of the seemingly random killings of the wholesome Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959 by two complete strangers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. While the former of the two criminals certainly is no shining example of an upstanding citizen, it is revealed that it was in fact Smith who killed all four members of the family as Hickock waited in silence.
As Capote goes on to unravel all qualities, good and bad, of Perry Smith, I often found myself surprisingly sympathetic to his story as I learned he had been abused, abandoned and constantly disparaged for his shortcomings in life. The most striking quality, though, are his extremely deformed legs, a characteristic of which he is not only ashamed but also one which causes him to consistently strive to prove those who doubt his physical capabilities wrong.
While his legs should not have been something that defined him as an individual, they were one of the first observations made by those who met him — an unwarranted conclusion that seemed to at least partially foster Smith’s constant quest for absolute control in his life. Whether it was the deciding factor in his decision to murder his four innocent victims is unclear, but its effect on his mental instability and obsessive insecurity — qualities that dominated these rash, violent actions — is noticeably illustrated.
This coincidence of the strikingly similar physical deformities of these two men, both of whom lack the clear motivation to kill their innocent victims in such a brutal manner, may be just that: a coincidence. Maybe Pistorius did truly think that Steenkamp was an intruder and there was no domestic disturbance prior to the shooting, as neighbors claim there was. Maybe the claims from friends and previous lovers of Pistorius’ possessive nature reveal nothing about this event, and rather the paranoid and gun-toting culture that dominates South African society is to blame.
But even if all of this is true, one can’t ignore the possibility that the factor of control is deeply imbedded in Pistorius’ psyche. Why would he have such a deadly formulated response to any home intruder? Why would he boast this potential to attack on his Twitter account and even to multiple reporters? It seems too simple to be chalked up to just plain fear of an intruder.
Like Smith, it seems as if Pistorius was trying to compensate for something he’s missing. Without legs since he was just 11 months old, Pistorius has undoubtedly had to overcome his fair share of adversity and social stigma. His collection of racing trophies was his answer to anyone who judged him or casted doubt on his ability to succeed. And he had a lot of trophies.
But despite his amazing talent and his dominating force, he will always be classified as “the runner with no legs.” He won’t ever be the fast guy who won; he’ll be the fast guy without legs who won. It seems only reasonable that this inescapable quality would create an equally inescapable sense of vulnerability.
So Pistorius tirelessly tried to compensate for the lack of control he had over other people’s conclusions. He fought to compete in the Olympics. He bought defense weapons and boasted about them, giving off an image of absolute control, rather than an image of weakness.
And then somehow in this predetermined act, he overcompensated. He didn’t just shoot once. He shot four times, ostensibly intending to kill his victim, and in the most paradoxical twist, he lost the control he was so desperately hoping to achieve.
This is the fine line we all must walk, somewhere between what we can and cannot control. The terrifying reality is that this line can be crossed by any one of us.
This desire to control is the only answer I have in this fierce battle of gun control. I have not and hope I will never be personally connected to a tragedy as awful as those associated with gun violence, either as a victim or a perpetrator.
But I’ve had tests go badly. I’ve lost a range of things, from a sailing race to my own temper. I have endured the loss of family members as victims of freak car accidents as well as victims of the slow decay of dementia. And while none of these events equates to the misuse of deadly firearms, they have all led to my own questioning of self-control and how, if at all, I could have prevented any of these things from happening. To my dismay, I usually come up empty handed, unable to compensate for these irreversible events.
We are all human. Unfortunately, we lose sight of this in the face of events that cannot be explained with a simple answer. We can be cruel and unforgiving, and in our mad dash to find explanations, it seems we ourselves instinctively lose control, often providing responses which are stranger than the events they’re supposed to explain. Not everything is up to us; power, intelligence and influence will never change that.
But we can seek to control this urge to jump to conclusions. I am not asking for anyone to grant forgiveness, but merely to grant guidance to the many who, in some way or another, feel lost, misunderstood or otherwise unworthy of handling their own decisions. As hard as it may seem, our own will to be better than we were yesterday is one thing we can control, whether we want to or not. As hard as it may seem, our own will to be better than we were yesterday is one thing we can control, whether we want to or not.
Elizabeth Siegal is a freshman English major from Bethesda, Md.
