The motion picture A Few Good Men challenges the question of why Marines obey their superiors’ orders without hesitation. The film illustrates a story about two Marines, Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey charged for the murder of Private First Class William T. Santiago. Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is known to be lackadaisical and originally considers offering a plea bargain in order to curtail Dawson’s and Downey’s sentence, finds himself fighting for the freedom of the Marines; their argument: they simply followed the orders given for a “Code Red”. The question of why people follow any order given has attracted much speculation from the world of psychology. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted an experiment in which randomly selected students were asked to deliver “shocks” to an unknown subject when he or she answered a question wrong. In his article, “The Perils of Obedience”, Milgram concludes anyone will follow an order with the proviso that it is given by an authoritative figure. Two more psychologists that have been attracted to the question of obedience are Herbert C. Kelman, a professor at Harvard University, and V. Lee Hamilton, a professor at the University of Maryland. In their piece, Kelman and Hamilton discuss the possibilities of why the soldiers of Charlie Company slaughtered innocent old men, women, and children. The Marines from the film obeyed the ordered “Code Red” because of how they were trained, the circumstances that were presented in Guantanamo Bay, and they were simply performing their job.
The question of why these Marines obeyed the “Code Red” may be answered by Stanley Milgram’s conclusions from his experiment on obedience. When asked by Kaffee, while...
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...mi Moore. Columbia Pictures, 1992. Film.
Baumrind, Diana. “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience”. Writing & Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 224-229. Print.
Kelman, Herbert C., Hamilton, V. Lee. “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience”. Writing & Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 266-277. Print.
Mcleod, Saul. Obedience in Psychology. Simply Psychology, 2007. Web. 6 November 2011.
Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Obedience”. Writing & Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 212-224. Print.
Powers, Rod. About.com, US Military. Military Orders: To Obey or Not to Obey? N.D. Web. 6 November 2011.
Comparative Analysis: A Few Good Men In the movie A Few Good Men, the director Rob Reiner follows the story of Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey a couple of marines charged for the murder of their fellow soldier Private First Class William Santiago. Contrary to their lawyer Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee’s assumptions, these men strongly believed that they are not guilty, or at least not fully responsible, for Santiago’s murder. As Dawson would later tell Kaffee, “I'll accept whatever punishment they give. But I believe I was right, sir.
All in all, there will always be people that will judge every move everyone else does in life just like the grandmother did in the story. As a result, people will just have to learn how to deal with it because if others decide to judge them they are probably doing something right. However, if you decide to judge someone else before you do it turn the critical eye on yourself and judge your personal life and ask yourself how is your life doing?
The power of blind obedience taints individuals’ ability to clearly distinguish between right and wrong in terms of obedience, or disobedience, to an unjust superior. In the article “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism,” Marianne Szegedy-Maszak discusses the unwarranted murder of innocent individuals due to vague orders that did not survive with certainty. Szegedy-Maszak utilizes the tactics of authorization, routinization, and dehumanization, respectively, to attempt to justify the soldiers’ heinous actions (Szegedy-Maszak 76-77). In addition, “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” by Theodore Dalrymple distinguishes between blind disobedience and blind obedience to authority and stating that neither is superior;
Baumrind, Diana. “Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience.” Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Ed. Thomas E. Leahey and Christine R. Farris. New Jersey: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 224-229. Print.
Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Obedience.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. Boston: Longman, 2011. 692-704.
The incident is described by social psychologist Herbert C. Kelman and sociologist V. Lee Hamilton in the article “The My Lai Massacre: a Crime of Obedience.” Lt. William Calley, charged with 102 killings, claims to have followed orders from his superiors, only accomplishing his duty, which is also a theme throughout the movie, A Few Good Men. After presented with a request from William Santiago, a marine on his base, to be transferred, Jessup refuses. The film depicts, through Colonel Jessup's authority, the refusal to obey a reasonable request as well as the pride one possesses when fulfilling his duty and baring superiority.
The movie I chose to watch was A Few Good Men directed by Rob Reiner and written by Aaron Sorkin. A few good men is about military law primarily. The case that the movie revolves around starts off with two marines stationed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. In the first scene of the movie it show’s marine Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and PFC Louden Downey beating up one of their fellow marines on base. The movie begins with the scene of the crime. The marine being beaten was PFC William T. Santiago a marine who was never good at being a marine in general. Santiago would fail miserably on runs and workouts which would only make the rest of the marine squad look bad as each marine depends on one another. The night that Dawson and Downey beat up Santiago they shoved a rag into his mouth. Santiago started bleeding and within hours died. Corporal Dawson and PFC Downey were
Linder, Doug. “An Introduction to the My Lai Courts Martial.” Famous American Trails: The My Lai Courts Martial, 1970. 15 Nov. 1999 <http://www.law.umkc.edu/
Why so many people obey when they feel coerced? Social psychologist Stanley Milgram made an experiment to find the effect of authority on obedience. He concluded that people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to cooperate with the authority, even when acting against their own better judgment and desires. Milgram’s experiment illustrates that people's reluctance to confront those who abuse power. The point of the experiment was to see how far a person will proceed in a concrete and measurable situation in which he is ordered to inflict increasing pain on a protesting victim, at what point will the subject refuse to obey the experimenter. One main question of the experiment was that how far the participant will comply with the experimenter’s instructions before refusing to carry out the actions required of him?
Milgram would argue that the two men are innocent simply because they were following the orders of someone above them. Comparing Dawson and Downey to the teacher in his obedience experiments, he would say that even though they knew what they were doing would bring harm to the subject they did it anyways because they were told by an authority figure. Milgram states in his article that “the experimenter’s physical presence has a marked impact on his authority” (Milgram 88). This is a huge factor as to why Dawson and Downey obeyed the dishonorable order. Milgram would state that because of the physical presence of their commander, and also being marines, they were more prone to obey the order. He effectively states that in his experiment a majority of the subjects obeyed the experimenter whose authority was fragile in many respects (Milgram 89). Chris White, a former marine, writes an article “A Former Marine on the Marine Motto” on the desensitization that occurs in the marine training camps (White). This is an important factor as to why Dawson and Downey obeyed the order. Desensitization and the authority of a marine general have much greater influence than just that of an experimenter in a lab coat. Milgram believes the “experimenter’s authority to be much less than that of a general, since the experimenter has no power to enforce his imperatives, and since participation in a psychological experiment scarcely evokes the sense of urgency and dedication found in warfare” (Milgram 88). The subjects in his experiment obeyed the orders of the experimenter who does not have half of the authority a general in a war has. The Marine Corps website says it simply as Semper Fidelis, Latin for always faithful, which guides Marines to be faithful to the mission, to each other, to the Corps and to the country, no matter what (“Semper Fidelis”). The
It is only natural to dismiss the idea of our own personal flaws, for who with a healthy sense of self wanders in thoughts of their own insufficiency? The idea of hypocrisy is one that strikes a sensitive nerve to most, and being labeled a hypocrite is something we all strive to avoid. Philip Meyer takes this emotion to the extreme by examining a study done by a social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, involving the effects of discipline. In the essay, "If Hitler Asked You to Electrocute a Stranger, Would You? Probably", Meyer takes a look at Milgram's study that mimics the execution of the Jews (among others) during World War II by placing a series of subjects under similar conditions of stress, authority, and obedience. The main theme of this experiment is giving subjects the impression that they are shocking an individual for incorrectly answering a list of questions, but perhaps more interesting is the results that occur from both ends of the research. Meyer's skill in this essay is using both the logical appeal of facts and statistics as well as the pathetic appeal to emotion to get inside the reader's mind in order to inform and dissuade us about our own unscrupulous actions.
Obedience is when you do something you have been asked or ordered to do by someone in authority. As little kids we are taught to follow the rules of authority, weather it is a positive or negative effect. Stanley Milgram, the author of “The perils of Obedience” writes his experiment about how people follow the direction of an authority figure, and how it could be a threat. On the other hand Diana Baumrind article “Review of Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience,” is about how Milgram’s experiment was inhumane and how it is not valid. While both authors address how people obey an authority figure, Milgram focuses more on how his experiment was successful while Baumrind seems more concerned more with how Milgram’s experiment was flawed and
Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience are the focus of Theodore Dalrymple and Ian Parker. Theodore Dalrymple is a British physician that composed his views of the Milgram experiment with “Just Do What the Pilot Tells You” in the New Statesman in July 1999 (254). He distinguishes between blind obedience and blind disobedience stating that an extreme of either is not good, and that a healthy balance between the two is needed. On the other hand, Ian Parker is a British writer who wrote “Obedience” for an issue of Granta in the fall of 2000. He discusses the location of the experiment as a major factor and how the experiment progresses to prevent more outcomes. Dalrymple uses real-life events to convey his argument while Parker exemplifies logic from professors to state his point.
In the film “ A Few Good Men” the rule of law and fundamental justice were not followed by Lance Cpl. Harold and Pfc. Louden Downey. The rule of law was disobeyed as soon as Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden acted above the law. They committed a criminal offence and disregarded Pvt. Santiago's rights. Although, the orders were given by superior officer, Col. Nathan Joseph, the fact of the matter still remains the same, a crime was committed . Pvt. Santiago’s rights were not taken into consideration, which inevitably lead to his death. Although Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden clearly disregarded the rules of law and acted above the law, procedural justice was still exercised. Both Cpl. Lance and Pfc. Louden were given rights to a fair trial and the
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the readers are lead to believe that the Grandmother is a good Southern woman who lives her life by God’s grace, and the Misfit is a horrendous, murderous, mad man that believes in nothing. Although these first impressions seem spot on at a first glance, the actual characteristics and traits of these characters are far more complex. The Grandmother and Misfit have a very intriguing conversation before he murders her, but in the short time before her death, the readers see the grandmothers need for redemption and how the murderous Misfit gave her the redemption she so desperately needed,