93 pages • 3 hours read
Barry LygaI Hunt Killers
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Malleable Identities
The idea that there are a multitude of factors that shift and influence a person’s ever-changing identity is explored at length throughout I Hunt Killers. As the son of notorious serial killer Billy Dent, Jazz worries that his father’s influence—either from genetics or the way he was raised—will make him destined to become a killer. Like many teenagers, Jazz is trying to figure himself out: what makes him tick, and what his purpose is in life. Complicating this search for identity, Jazz was literally trained to be a killer. Billy treated Jazz as his protégé and would sometimes force Jazz to participate (or bear witness to) his gruesome deeds. Thus, the trauma of Jazz’s upbringing makes it seem unavoidable that Jazz will inherit his father’s bloodlust. However, Jazz makes it his life’s mission to defy both “nature” (his father’s passed genetics) and “nurture” (the way his father raised him) by using his unique upbringing to stop crime.
There are moments throughout the novel where, from the reader’s perspective, it seems as though Jazz may actually be a killer just like his father. For instance, when Jazz is examining Fiona Goodling’s body in the morgue, without even realizing it, his hands move toward her neck in a strangling motion: “Jazz then realized that his own gloved hands—this guy isn’t an amateur. He probably used gloves—had come to rest on either side of the neck. With just the right movement, he could have that neck in his hands” (37). This incident could just be Jazz trying to get inside the mind of the killer, but it also could be his own murderous impulses. One of Jazz’s skills is being able to view the world as a serial killer would, which helps him hunt killers. In one scene, Jazz observes G. William’s fingers and his thoughts naturally turn to violence:
Jazz imagined cutting off that forefinger. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt G. William. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt anyone at all. It’s just that he couldn’t. Stop. Thinking about it. Sometimes he felt like his brain was a slasher movie set on fast-forward. And no matter how many times he jabbed at the Off button, the movie just kept playing and playing, horrors assaulting him constantly (19).
It is not always clear, however, if Jazz sees the world as a serial killer as a means to investigate crime or because that is simply how he sees the world. The question of Jazz’s capabilities creates dramatic tension throughout the novel and, ultimately, even Jazz does not seem to know the answer. Jazz constantly second-guesses his own desires and impulses throughout the novel: “Would a true sociopath worry about things like this—if the caring was real? And then worry about worrying about it?” (137).
Jazz, however, is not the only person in the novel exploring self-identity. The Impressionist does not have an identity of his own; he is simply an imitation of Billy Dent. Meanwhile, Billy Dent has multiple identities: The Artist, Green Jack, Hand-in-Glove, and Gentle Killer. In I Hunt Killers, identity is fluid for many of the characters.
The Intense Legacy of Fathers
The impact of fathers, particularly on their sons, drives another theme in I Hunt Killers. Jazz’s father leaves an outsize impression on Jazz, so much so that Jazz worries that every part of his personality has been tainted by Billy Dent.
Throughout the book, Jazz’s personality traits—especially those traits that are utilitarian or serve him in some way—are linked to his father. For example, when Jazz needs to get past the female secretary manning G. William’s office, Jazz uses his natural charm with women to distract her: “‘Thanks,’ he said, and then—because he couldn’t help it—he gave her the full-on megawatt smile. ‘The Charmer,’ Billy had called it. One more thing passed down from father to son” (13). For Billy, this charm has a nefarious edge, as it was something he relied on to manipulate his victims. For Jazz, he uses his charm for conniving purposes, but ones that are ultimately intended to serve justice. Gramma Dent, in her senility, occasionally mistakes Jazz for Billy, referring to him as her “son” rather than “grandson.”
Billy’s version of fatherhood shares some commonalities with fatherhood associated with normal fathers: Billy wants to teach Jazz the skills of his trade; to see Jazz be successful at whatever he pursues; and is proud of his son and wants him to accomplish great things. Of course, because Billy is a serial killer, his parenting skills are quite different from others:
Billy Dent’s fathering skills—such as they were—resembled brainwashing techniques more than parenting. As a result, Jazz mostly remembered bits and pieces, like now—a memory of blood running into a sink drain; the pungent smell of it thick in his nose; a sharp, stained knife resting in the sink. Jazz had a terror of knives left in sinks (42).
In Billy and Jazz’s climactic meeting in Chapter 30, Billy even makes an aside joke about “helicopter parents” (311) and trying to align his style of parenting with more mundane methods. Billy’s legacy looms large in Jazz’s life. He lives in the house where his father was raised and drives the Jeep his father drove. Jazz is reminded, in numerous ways and on a daily basis, that he is the father of notorious serial killer Billy Dent. Jazz describes his Gramma Dent’s home in a way that mirrors the insidious way in which family legacy, for better or for worse, is transferred through the generations:
But within those humble walls, a legacy had been born. Billy Dent had grown up there, and now his son lived there, the house and the legacy passed down like a baton going from one runner to the next. A simple house, run-down and inconspicuous. Right here in the very middle of Middle America, hell had been born and suckled and matured(61).
The way this paragraph is written, it is unclear whether the “hell” that was “suckled and matured” in Gramma Dent’s home refers to Billy or Jazz, another way of teasing out the matter of how Jazz’s identity is unclear at this point. Despite his doubts, Connie’s words to Jazz the night before his visit to Wammaket bring him strength during his tense meeting with Billy. He recalls them when he is feeling weakened by Billy:
And that brought to mind what she’d said before. About how he didn’t have to be his dad, how he could rise above his upbringing. Sons aren’t their fathers. Not the good, not the bad. Sons get second chances. You don’t have to be what your dad is. You don’t have his yes, and you don’t have to have his life (307).
Connie, as a positive female influence, counteracts Gramma Dent’s negative impact on how Jazz views himself, his father, and their ultimate relationship as father and son.
Guilt as Burden and Motivation
Jazz feels guilt over his father’s crimes. The guilt consumes his thoughts, and every waking moment for Jazz is geared toward addressing that guilt by helping hunt and capture serial killers. Ultimately, guilt shapes the course of Jazz’s entire life. In I Hunt Killers, there is possibility in guilt. It is not just a burden, but also a powerful motivating force, one with the potential to drive change.
Billy Dent killed over 100 people and this fact wracks Jazz with guilt constantly. The guilt arises because Jazz was unable to stop the killings. Despite having been only a small child during his father’s murder spree, Jazz still feels responsible. For Jazz’s entire life, he has been approached by family members of Billy’s victims, all seeking closure in some way or another through Jazz, which does nothing but stoke the flames on Jazz’s sense of overwhelming responsibility. Jazz wrestles with thoughts of what he could have done to prevent Billy from committing all those murders: “What was I supposed to do? Jazz wanted to ask the kid, wanted to ask the whole world. Was I supposed to kill him in his sleep? That would have been the only way to stop him. Kill my own father? Maybe that’s what the world had wanted, though. It bothered Jazz that he’d never done anything to stop Billy” (81).
The decisive moment in guilt’s effect on Jazz’s life comes in Chapter 35, when the Impressionist is revealed to have been disguised as Jeff Fulton. Feeling awful for what his father did to Jeff Fulton’s daughter, Jazz was unable to look “Fulton” in the eye when he approached him weeks prior. Jazz considers that had he been able to look at the man directly, perhaps he would have realized it was not the real Jeff Fulton. Guilt, then, in a sense, literally prevented Jazz from catching the Impressionist.
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