In 1974, when Stanly Milgram released his findings about obedience the world was shocked. The idea that subordinates will nearly always listen to superiors to the extent of killing another person was shocking. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science fiction novel, Never Let Me Go he uses this concept; the children of Hailsham are all taught to follow directions from the guardians. Ishiguro utilizes Solomon E. Asch’s concept of conformity as well. There are many instances where the children conform to certain societal ideals. The combination of these concepts contribute to the difficultly for the clones to rebel. Ishiguro uses these physiological phenomenons to show how cruel society really is. Kathy often speaks about how strict the guardians …show more content…
Ishiguro also illustrates this point because none of the clones rebel. This is quite simply because the clones were sheltered in Hailsham not knowing much about the outside world. They were all told not to run away from Hailsham, so they obediently stayed. It is only at the end of the book, and the lives of the clones, when Ms. Emily reveals the truth, “All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma” (Ishiguro, 258). Ishiguro uses this to show that as “second class citizens” clones must be protected from the public to ensure their safety. Society only teaches the kids to stay healthy until their time of donation. In this way they were never taught to rebel. It seems like the clones are treated just as the slaves were in eighteenth century United States. Ishiguro wants people to realize that they are oppressing these citizens and putting them in a position where they cannot rebel. The kids were taught that the outside world is not for them. Kathy even says, “A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around” (Ishiguro 121). Ishiguro shows that they were taught through fear, the strongest emotion. With this kind of emotion the kids would never think of running
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
Stanley Milgram’s experiment shows societies that more people with abide by the rules of an authority figure under any circumstances rather than follow their own nature instinct. With the use of his well-organized article that appeals to the general public, direct quotes and real world example, Milgram’s idea is very well-supported. The results of the experiment were in Milgram’s favor and show that people are obedient to authority figures. Stanley Milgram shows the reader how big of an impact authority figures have but fails to answer the bigger question. Which is more important, obedience or morality?
In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedict rant about marriage for most of the beginning of the play, while Claudio raves about how wonderful it will be being married to Hero. Yet in the end, Claudio exchanges his marriage to Hero for an opportunity to bash her in public, while Beatrice and Benedick marry despite that they were mortal enemies for most of the first three acts. How did the situation swing around to this degree? Beatrice and Benedick had been using the most extreme metaphors to demonstrate their scorn of each other and of marriage, and Claudio had been doing the same to demonstrate his love of Hero. Not only did none of these three characters mean what they were saying, but meant the reverse, and the people that plotted to bring them together or pull them apart plotted because they understood on some level what each really wanted.
The clones know what they were created to become and the death that awaits them. In Ishiguro’s novel, the “donors” are told exactly what will happen to them. Their guardians tell them that they’ll “start to donate [their] vital organs” (81) before they are even middle-aged adults. This news is very heavy and is broken to them in such a light way. Knowing their gruesome future, the clones begin to fear their fate. To which the guardians think “Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” (254). Even here they attempt to sympathize with their tortured creations but still fail to realize that it is all their doing. The humans have created a being destined to die serving a race that does not really care for them. Just like Ishiguro’s characters, the clones in Blade Runner also fear their death. Unlike those in Never Let Me Go, these clones are told the exact date of their death. Knowing that they are going to die sometime the clones hunt down the humans that know their exact fate. When you ask “how long do I live” (BR) and the answer is “four years” (BR) there is no one way to react. Any normal being would be filled with rage which is exactly what these clones
It was found that the reasons for obedience are not only psychological but sociological as well. Milgram provides the idea of division of labor. As long as the product comes from an assembly line, there is no one person to blame.
More specifically, the movie A Few Good Men depicts the results of blindly obeying orders. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, also explores obedience to authority in his essay “ The Perils of Obedience”. On the other hand, Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, focused on disobedience to authority in his essay “ Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.” Milgram wrote about how people were shockingly obedient to authority when they thought they were harming someone else while Fromm dissected both: why people are so prone to obey and how disobedience from authoritative figures can bring beneficial changes for society. Obeying commands, even when they go against our morals, is human nature; Disobeying commands, however, is challenging to do no matter what the situation is.
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
Obedience is a widely debated topic today with many different standpoints from various brilliant psychologists. Studying obedience is still important today to attempt to understand why atrocities like the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre happened so society can learn from them and not repeat history. There are many factors that contribute to obedience including situation and authority. The film A Few Good Men, through a military court case, shows how anyone can fall under the influence of authority and become completely obedient to conform to the roles that they have been assigned. A Few Good Men demonstrates how authority figures can control others and influence them into persuading them to perform a task considered immoral or unethical.
Living in a world where they have successfully created human clones for organ donations, is not a great achievement to mankind in any way, shape, or form. It makes you wonder, where exactly do you draw the line between the advancement of technology and the dehumanization that occurs because of it?" Never Let Me Go is a Novel based in the main character Kathy’s memories of her experience in Hailsham and after she left. Hailsham is a boarding school for children who have been cloned from people considered as low life’s or unsuccessful, the only purpose given too these children are for them to develop into adults and donate as many of their mature organs as they can till they die, or as the students and guardians refer to it “complete”. The author focuses on the sick ways of our current society and warns us about the possible future that may be introduced and excepted, Kazuo Ishiguro writes with the intent of teaching and affecting the reader on an emotional level at the same time.
Half way through the novel the reader finds out that Kathy, and the other Hailsham students, sole purpose in life is to grow up and donate the his or her vital organs. To the reader, it is confusing why the students do not just run away. However, the way Ishiguro wrote Never Let Me Go it makes sense that they do not. Throughout Kathy and the other student’s lives, they have constantly done what the majority of the students did. Ignorance is why Kathy and the others do not run away from their inevitable deaths. The students simply did not know anything other than growing up to become a donor. All of their lives they have been molded to follow the popular idea, so to the students become a donor is exactly what they want to do with their
Conformity is defined as the occurrence of people yielding to social pressures as a result of pressure from a group of their peers; when faced by the pressure to conform, people will alter their behaviour and actions to fit the norm demonstrated by their peers (Lilienfield et al., 2012). Conformity is studied so that is can be understood and used in society to facilitate positive outcomes, and help avoid situations where peoples’ predisposition to conform leads to negative consequences (Lilienfield et al., 2012). By understanding conformity and other social processes society as a whole is able to understand themselves better and motivates them to work on improving as a whole (Lilienfield et al., 2012).
How do the actions and words of a society affect the way people act? In Never Let Me Go, author Kazuo Ishiguro depicts a society in which individuality is threatened by the pressure to conform through methods such as peer pressure and social expectations. Without a doubt, peer pressure is most commonly found in schools today just as social expectations are suffocating the middle class’ desire to become their own unique person.
We will primarily focus on this location since this is where Kathy spends most of her time and it is the place that seems to have influenced her and the other characters' life the most. Hailsham appears to be an unconventional school since most institutions for clones are portrayed as raising them in an inhumane way and only see them as collections of organs (Ishiguro 2006). Hailsham on the other hand, gives the clones a humanized and cultivated education through e.g. art classes. With the art the clones produce, the guardians intend to prove that they have souls and should be treated like real human beings (255-258). This form of education gives the clones a feeling of higher meaning in their lives, and it is from that feeling and the search for an identity that their dreams of the future (140) and the myth of deferral arise (150). The education at Hailsham in reality only serves to let the students live a decent life before they start donating their organs. In the eyes of the guardians, the students at Hailsham were just fortunate enough to have lived a humanized life but they still have to "run the course that has been set for [them]" (Ishiguro, 2006: 261). The guardians at Hailsham think that the clones are inferior to the human race, which is shown through the use of words such as "creatures" (249) and “spiders” (38). Hailsham, among other institutions, are in fact only
...more humane than most (Whitehead 68). Throughout their lives, the clones are only told what to do and how to live. They work for those they do not know. Every unidentified person adds to the secrecy of the novel. The clones never ask questions and they are never given the opportunity to prove themselves.
There are small hints throughout the first few chapters of the text that reveal that Kathy may be addressing an audience of other clones like her, and not an average person. She assumes that we, as readers are just like her and already know about her life. At one point, Kathy modestly acknowledges, “I don’t know how it was where you were” (11). She is obviously assuming that we are donors as well. Her descriptions of Hailsham and her life frequently refer to second person; for example, she says, “The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment” (36). Kathy is explaining, how she felt when the Mistress looked at the kids when she saw them. She was repelled by them, and this showed them how the rest of the outside world will see them too. They have never felt rejection, or repulsion from somebody until that point. Through this stylistic technique, Ishiguro suggests that only someone with similar experiences can truly understand Kathy’s story, and that allows readers to make an effort to relate to her, as we do not know much about her life. We only know what Kathy describes to us in her thoughts, and descriptions of her childhood.