MIKAL GILMORE “SHOT IN THE HEART”

Mikal Gilmore “Shot In the Heart”

Mikal Gilmore “Shot In the Heart”

Introduction

Mikal Gilmore has covered and criticized rock & roll culture and related issues for many national publications. His first book, Shot in the Heart, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Shot in the Heart, too, presents us with the life of Gary Gilmore. However, this book is written by his youngest brother and presents us with a portrayal of Gilmore's childhood and life growing up in a family with an abusive father.

This book gives us the background from which Gary Gilmore came and provides a deeper understanding of the man presented to us so well in Mailer's Executioner's Song. What we begin to see, as this book chronicles Gilmore's young life, is the genesis of a murderer. The crime correlates of social class and family are clearly analyzed in this very poignant account of a future murderer's upbringing. In this paper we analyses shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore.

Overview

Mikal Gilmore tells the true story of how his brother, Gary, became the first person executed in the United States in nearly a decade. Gary committed a murder and was sentenced just after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. Mikal was very distant from his family but the bond between him and his brother caused him to try to allow Gary to let him use his influence to stop the execution.

Much to Mikal's dismay, Gary had not only accepted the fact that he was going to die but he even welcomed it. The family bond combined with unimaginable hate make this highly dysfunctional family a fascinating psychological study. At first Gary's murders seem unexplained but as the pain of the family's history is brought forward, the viewer is given a glimpse of the violence and cruelty by which this young man was surrounded. Mikal is so ashamed of the legacy that his family has left that he makes it his mission to end the bloodline with his generation (Susannah, 2001).

Family issues

"Shot in the Heart" is based on a book of the same title by Mikal Gilmore, the youngest of four brothers in a family marked by violence, religion, superstition and death. Convicted for killing a motel manager in Utah (and also charged with killing a gas station attendant), Gary Gilmore wanted to be executed. His brothers traveled to see him in prison to decide whether to request a stay of his execution. Most of the story focuses on Mikal's wrestling with this decision. But there are poignant scenes between Frank Jr. and Mikal in which family secrets are revealed and Lee delivers a magnificent, subtle interpretation of this troubled man (Norman Mailer, 1979). Shot in the Heart" is a complex story, but here is an excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle review that provides an outline of the key characters especially Lee's portrayal of Frank Gilmore ...