Understanding Gumb

Understanding Gumb

Jame Gumb had a hard childhood, and his actions, though horrible, are somewhat explainable. He was in conflict with females and with all his guardians. Jame faced many rejections in life, making him feel insecure and unhappy with himself. In addition he was not a very social person. Jame Gumb’s background says a lot about his behavior in relation to other serial killers; his tendencies and behaviors correlate to what is “known” to be going on in the mind of a serial killer.
As a child Jame Gumb had problems with his mother. She did not really bother to notice important details, like her son’s birth certificate. “His mother had been carrying him a month when she failed to place in the Miss Sacramento Contest in 1948. The ‘Jame’ on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct” (329). He felt like it was his fault that his mother did not win, since she was pregnant with him. Perhaps she never made it clear to him that it was not his fault. It appears that his mother failed to raise him correctly and give him the love of a mother each child deserves. “When her acting career failed to materialize, his mother went into an alcoholic decline; Gumb was two when Los Angeles County placed him in a foster home” (329). His mother was not there for him when he needed her most. Gumb was being tossed around from one family to another. Despite that Gumb idolized his mother. He thought she was beautiful and he wanted to be just like her. “And here she came, approaching the stairs in her white swimsuit, with a radiant smile for the young man who assisted at the stairs, then quick on her heels away, the camera following the back of her thighs: Mom. There was Mom” (258). He wanted to make up for the mother he never had.
Jame Gumb felt rejected his whole life, first by his mother, and then when he went to get a sex change. He thought he was a transsexual, which did not prove to be true; it looked more like mental...