Greed, and the desire for wealth, led them to commit their crimes for financial reasons as well. Bonnie's poetry seems to communicate this as well. In her "The Story of Suicide Sal," whose female protagonist can be read as the idealized image that Bonnie had of herself, Bonnie writes that "one year we were desperately happy; Our ill gotten gains we spent free" ("Bonnie Parker"). The association between money, happiness, and love in this stanza can be used to argue that this is what Bonnie, herself, felt towards the gaining of wealth. Further, it is noted that "their motivation was personal greed" ("Bonnie Parker").
Still, Hendley points out that Bonnie and Clyde never committed a robbery that earned them a great deal of money. He remarks that their biggest robber yielded under $10,000, and that they did not spend much of their time in the lap of luxury, as thieves in popular movies like Oceans 11 do. Instead, they "lived like bums, eating and sleeping in their car and bathing in country streams." They were even the butt of other criminals' jokes (Hendley XV). This allows one to suggest that Bonnie and Clyde's crimes were committed for social reasons. Although Bonnie and Clyde did not spend much of their time targeting large banks that were seen as social evils, but rather robbing smaller business owned by people who were not that different from them ("Bonnie Parker"), social reasons behind their murders can be found in Bonnie's poetry. Oppression was a condition of the great depression, and it was common for the general community to feel socially wronged because of the economic conditions. The fact that Bonnie and Clyde felt this is as well is evident in Bonnie's poetry. Probably the most obvious social motivation for their crimes found in Bonnie's lines is distaste for the law and law enforcement. In one stunning Stanza, Bonnie writes about Clyde:
But the laws fooled around, kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me, 'I'll never be free,
So I'll meet a few of them in hell' ("Bonnie Parker").
Here, Bonnie shows that social motivations for the couples' crimes do, indeed, exist, in terms of rebellion against the oppression of the law. Her poem, "The Story of Suicide Sal," gives readers a similar impression of the police. Although Sal and her gang commit the crimes that they are accused of in the poem, Bonnie portrays the police as the ones responsible for Sal's incarceration. In the 1960s movie version of Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree, the social motivations for their actions are emphasized, Briley writes, suggesting that the two young, beautiful criminals were "victims of society" who "did not mean to hurt anyone," but simply to avenge the plight of the "common people" by robbing banks (234). While there is little truth to Hollywood's version of events, Bonnie's poetry and other evidence certainly suggests that the couple did engage in crime for some social reasons.
From psychological, to financial, to social reasons, Bonnie's poetry allows students of history to grasp an understanding of the motivations behind Bonnie...
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