I never thought murder could be so subjective.

In the murder scene, we had Ripley and Dickie alone in a rowboat. Ripley confessed his love and got rejected, and out of anger hit Dickie with an oar causing Dickie a large laceration on his face. Ripley, then realizing what he had done, quickly apologized but it was too late, Dickie overwhelmed with anger, went after Ripley, locked him in a two-hand chokehold angrily screaming “I’m going to kill you.” Ripley then in fear, grabbed the oar and started hitting Dickie again until he stopped… and died.

There could have been 2 possibilities. 1) Self Defense 2)Manslaughter. Self-defense can be argued in that Ripley was defending himself from a deadly force ie Dickie choking him screaming “I’m going to kill you.” But I could argue that it was manslaughter because, after the choking when Ripley was in the midst of attacking Dickie, he could’ve stopped. Ripley was clearly in the dominant position during his attack as Dickie was already beaten into submission. But because Ripley was in such an emotional state of mind, he couldn’t think clearly and didn’t think to stop. It’s quite interesting how much nuance there can be to declaring what is “murder.”