Dead Teen Walking

Both White Fang and Dead Teen Walking, relate to the theme nature vs. nurture. In the article, it tells us a true story of a teen, Shareef Cousin, 16, who was convicted of murdering a 25 year old man, Michael Gerardi, and was sentenced on the death roe, in New Orleans. He was one of 63 juvenile offenders on death row in prison in the U.S.
I believe in nature vs. nuture, however as a society, we cannot make excuses for teenagers that rebel the law and murder because of how they were raised. This is my opinion, however it is still on a teeter-tauter after reading White Fang. I can understand both ways and I feel more strongly that there are no excuses for murder, but then going back and reading what Cousin had to go through as a child and being hit in the head, I feel bad for him and then I think about the reasons behind him killing were not out of hatred toward the man he killed but his father, his family and his childhood. Yet, even with all those excuses, there are always choices a person can make, then to murder.
White Fang definatly changed my opinion of this article. Normally, I would say that there is no excuse for killing a person; "Children mature enough to murder are mature enough to be punished for it" (pg 3). In a way I still think like that, but I can fully understand the nature vs. nuture. In White Fang, he was raised wild, then brought into a "family" where he had to obey a master that was cruel to him and where the other animals didn't except him. He was beaten and tormented, so he had to become a strong, vicious beast to survive the hurt he felt deep inside. "They were White Fang's environment, these men, and they were molding the clay of him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature" (IV.3). As soon as he was free from his master, Scott took him in and showed him love. White Fang had changed into a loving dog basically. This book did show that the nature vs. nurture theme worked. "The basic life that was in him took charge of him. The will to exist of his body surged over him. He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of life. All intelligence was gone. It was as though he had no brain. His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of his flesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the expression of its existence" (IV.4.).