Revenge

In the story “Axiomatic” the main character, Mark Carver, purchases an implant to help him kill his wife’s murderer, but when it comes time to kill the killer, the killer goes to fight back and mark empty’s the gun into the killer. The argument is, did mark kill him because the implant made him do it or did he do it out of self defense because the killer was going to fight back. Even though the implant was made so that a person could have no guilt for killing another human, Mark kept contemplating if he was going to kill him or not because he still felt that killing another human was morally wrong. Ultimately Mark killed him in self defense and the implant didn’t affect his decision.

Ever since Mark found out that his wife’s murderer was released from prison he wanted revenge for her death. He starts out by purchasing a gun, then a silencer and joins a shooting club where they practice target shooting on human silhouette targets. A fellow club member sells him vaporizing bullets that disappear on impact so there wouldn’t be any trace. Mark keeps telling himself that he won’t get caught and that he is doing this to revenge his wife’s death. Then he finds an implant on the internet that was made to make a person not feel guilty for taking another humans life. All of these things that mark did just show how he knew that he wanted to kill him and there wasn’t a way he wasn’t going to turn around and not do it. After he had made his purchases he started stalking the killer, he took notes on when he came home, which direction he came from. So he knew where to hide when the killer did show up at his house. Every night Mark would go over his plan and play it all out in his head so he knew what to do and when to do it. Mark hadn’t planned for the killer to fight back. So when the killer did go for the gun Mark shoots him on instinct. This is called fight or flight syndrome, which means that when a human is threatened they either fight back or run away from the threat. In Mark’s case he fights back by and kills the killer. Mark didn’t have time to think at all because when the killer went for the gun Mark reacted simultaneously and shot the killer till he was dead. The reason why he shoots until he runs out of bullets was because he was so full of fear and he didn’t know what else to do. Since Mark had been contemplating whether or not to kill the killer that deep down he wanted to just kill him and move on with his life. Mark was losing his mind and he had to kill him to get back to a normal life. By killing his wife’s killer Mark finally got closure.

The implant that Mark purchased was made so that people wouldn’t fell anything when they killed another human being. It told the person that people where meat and that people were nothing. This really didn’t work for Mark because he couldn’t make up his mind whether or not he should kill his wife’s murderer. Once the implant is activated his still has the same mind set, should he kill him or not. The only thing the implant does for Mark is to see why the killer killed his wife. As Mark has the gun pointed at the killer, the killer tells how the robbery was going all wrong and he lost his temper and in doing so he shoots Marks wife. With the implant activated Mark understands where the killer is coming from and he finally accepts the murder of his wife. The only problem was when Mark was thinking about this the killer goes for his gun and Mark kills him. The only thing the implant did for Mark was to show him why the killer killed his wife.

Ever since Mark found out about his wife’s killer getting out of prison he knew he wanted revenge for his wife’s death and he knew the only way to get it was to kill his wife’s killer. He does everything he can to make it the perfect murderer so he can get away clean and finally find closure. He had meditated on the complete killing by making sure that he knew exactly when and where to do commit it and how to do it without no one knowing. Mark purchases an implant to help him with the guilt of killing another human being but it doesn’t work in the way that he wants it to. Instead of it telling him that murder is fine, it ends up showing him why the killer killed his wife. Mark killed the killer in reaction to when the killer went to grab the gun out of Marks hand, the killing was self defense.