> What could cause such senseless violence? What could cause a bunch of boys and young men to ruthlessly beat a helpless individual almost to death? In one context, the violence of McCall's beating is not senseless, at least in terms of their being a "good reason" for it from the viewpoint of those who beat him. The Cherry Boys would consider it ridiculous to call the beating "senseless," for from their perspective McCall asked for it by earlier holding a gun to the head of one of their members. They would call McCall's holding of the gun to his head "senseless." But McCall would say that what started the process of violence was the Cherry Boys' coming into McCall's neighborhood and flirting with the neighborhood girls at the bus stop.
In other words, the cycle spins viciously back into the past in justification just as it spins into the future in reprisal upon reprisal. To the perpetrator of the senseless violence, it is not senseless at all. In the heads of those beating McCa
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