Ashleigh Norris
Dr. Carpenter
Freshman Reading/Composition II
30 March 2014
The Missing Piece What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words ‘Bonnie and Clyde’? Could it be misunderstood modern-day Romeo and Juliet? How about psychopathic murderers who took pleasure in the pain and suffering of others? Regardless of how the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde depicts their relationship, more to the story exists than what was shown on camera. The duo is remembered today as being relentless and crime-crazed, but the real Bonnie Parker was nothing like her partner Clyde Barrow. In fact, historical evidence reveals that Bonnie was just in it to achieve attention from her first husband Roy and fill the void of his absence by accompanying Clyde in his murdering and bank robbing sprees. It is evident from the very beginning of the movie that Bonnie tended to throw herself on Clyde; he was a stranger stealing her mom’s car, and she immediately joined him in his endeavors without hesitation. Under normal circumstances, a young woman would call the police for or at least run away from the robber. This shows that she was desperate for adventure and that she had an abyss of emptiness in her heart. ‘From what?’ you may ask. At the age of sixteen, Bonnie married a man named Roy Thornton who is said to have been a “roaming husband with a roaming mind.” He was sent to prison for five years on account of robbery and left Bonnie with a broken, lonely heart (Ballinger). When Clyde found her in the movie, Bonnie was a waitress with nothing going for her in life, so it made sense that she would join him and use her husband’s five-year absence to find a way to rekindle her appeal to him. Unfortunately, after watching a remade version of Bonnie and Clyde’s life on film, the audience may conclude that Bonnie was solely in it because she was downright vicious and utterly insane for the crimes she took part in; however, a couple sources state otherwise. Blanche Barrow, the wife of Clyde’s brother, states in her book My Life With Bonnie and Clyde, "I was the wild one… I think Bonnie was afraid of guns" (Barrow). Furthermore, gang member William Daniel (W.D.) Jones, who lived into the 1970s, indicated that he was unsure if he had ever actually seen her fire a gun. Even though she was present at more than a hundred crimes and dozens of felonies during her years with Clyde, she was not the machine gun-wielding killer that the movie portrayed her to be. Bonnie’s motive appears to be this: if she was recognized as an accomplice to a young and attractive bank-robber in his nationwide crimes, then maybe she could finally make Roy see the bad girl in her and make him want to stay with her when he is released from prison.
Now that we understand why Bonnie was in on the crime sprees in the first place, we can begin to unfold why she let the crimes get so out of hand. Problems truly began to arise after Clyde murdered a man for the first time in the movie. Their life became especially tense and nomadic, and they did not know exactly how to handle it at first. They resorted to deciding that the show must go on; there was no way they could stop now and get away with it. From then on in the film, Bonnie was portrayed as the one who got carried away with the crimes, when in reality all she wanted was to gain the public’s full attention, including her beloved husband Roy’s. So she insisted upon the gang taking daunting pictures of holding guns to their hostage police officers and sending the photos to newspaper companies. Surely if she made it to the front page of national newspapers from robbery then it would appear behind his prison walls on some random coffee table, right? Bonnie and Clyde would be the words in everyone’s mouths, the talk of the town. It is no wonder the audience despises Bonnie at this point; she seems to be the one driving the madness to continue. Did anyone stop to think that this was her way of filling the void of love? Running away from her problems, thinking the grass is greener on the other side. Not to mention it was no secret that Bonnie desired Clyde as a lover but he hardly reciprocated. Based on the scene of Bonnie endlessly running into the field, it is clear that Bonnie was altogether desperate to fill the ever-growing void in her heart. By the end of the movie when Bonnie and Clyde are violently massacred at such a young age by lawmen at a roadblock in Louisiana, it definitely feels like a tragedy for the audience. Left with mixed emotions, we question whether we should be sad at their early death or satisfied with the justice they were served. The sad truth is that Bonnie Parker lived out the cliche “If you lay with dogs, you are going to get fleas.” It does not appear that she had any evil intent at all; she was hopelessly in love with the man that pushed her to her death. Through historical records and the 1967 film, it is clear that her motive was simply to win back her first husband’s affection and to fill the void that Roy left her when he was sent to prison for five years. After all, Bonnie Parker was still wearing her wedding ring when she died.

Works Cited

Ballinger, Frank R. "Bonnie & Roy." Bonnie & Roy. Texas Hideout, 1997. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Barrow, Blanche Caldwell, and John Neal Phillips. My Life with Bonnie & Clyde. Norman:
University of Oklahoma, 2004. Print.
Bonnie and Clyde. Dir. Arthur Penn. Perf. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. 1967. DVD.