Patricia Highsmith’s short story, “Something the Cat Dragged In,” provides various examples of human nature when influenced by evil as it occurs by ordinary people. These situations can be analyzed through Philip Zimbardo’s video, “Psychology of Evil,” and Wendell Bell’s article, “Who is Really Evil?” Their theories further relate to Patrik Jonsson’s article “Rich Kid Gets Probation for Drunk-Driving Deaths. His Defense? ‘Affluenza’.” Wendell Bell defines evil as “Human actions or inactions that harm other people” (Bell 55 C1-2). Bell expresses two categories of evil behavior: idealistic evil and instrumental evil. Idealistic evil is criminal actions that are committed because the perpetrator believes they are right, thus, religious extremism …show more content…
The group is surprised as the Herbert’s cat, Portland Bill, carries in a severed hand that appears dirty, and has a golden wedding ring on one of its fingers. The crew mulls over their choice of what to do with this hand for several days, they contemplate whether to turn it into the police, or simply let it blow over and go on with their lives. Michael plays detective as he dismembers the fingers in order to read engravings on the wedding ring, in pursuit of discovering who the hand belongs to. As the story unfolds, Michael learns that the hand belongs to Bill Reeves, a promiscuous farmworker, who enjoys flirting with various men’s wives. Bill Reeves works for Tom Dickenson, a respected and wealthy farm owner in their small rural village in England. Tom Dickenson kills Bill Reeves in cold blood, alongside a trusted family friend, Peter. Once Michael discovers Tom Dickenson is responsible for Bill Reeves’ untimely death, him and his entourage decide not to contact the police, for the reason that they do not wish to tarnish Tom Dickenson’s
...ess of who gets hurt. I began to wonder if it was truly evil to take what one desires, to satisfy your own gluttony even if doing so will cause someone else pain. For a split second, I thought of evil as a suitable answer to an unforgiving and prejudiced world.
Claudia Card begins by questioning the difference between wrong and evil. How do we know when something crosses the line between being just wrong, to being an evil act? How does hatred and motive play a part in this? How can people psychologically maintain a sense of who they are when they have been the victims of evil? Card attempts to explain these fundamental questions using her theory of evil; the Atrocity Paradigm (Card, pg.3).
Jackson, Shirley. “The Possibility of Evil.” Literature Reading, Reacting, Writing. Kirszner, Laurie. Mandell Stephen. 4th edition. Sea Harbor: Harcourt College Publishers. 2001. 463-474
THEME: The line between good and evil is sometimes unclear, and as a result, people often think that they are doing the right thing when it is actually the wrong action, and vice versa.
T.C. Boyle tells a story again about how people intend good and cause damage. For example, they pack mor...
Lacayo, Richard, Victoria Rainert. "Toward the Root of the Evil." Time 6 April 1998: p. 38 (1 - 4).
... show that criminality and “evil” are not that different, as we tend to define them, but normal human responses that merely become amplified and find a destructive outlet.
The world is plagued with an inseparable mix of good and evil. People make mistakes, but often start out with good intentions. Often times actions live in the grey zone, a combination of good intentions but bad outcomes. In Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time there are many decisions that could be considered morally ambiguous. The story is told from the perspective of an autistic fifteen-year-old, Christopher Boone, who is investigating the death of his neighbor’s dog. His mother, Judy Boone supposedly died two years back, when in actuality she ran off to London with another man and, in turn, has been shut out of Christopher’s life. His father, Ed Boone hides the truth involving Christopher’s mother, pretending
In January 2002 James Waller released the first edition of the book “Becoming Evil – How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killings.” Dr. James Waller is a professor at Keene State College in New Hampshire and is home to one of the nation’s oldest Holocaust resource centers, the Cohen Center for Genocide and Holocaust Studies. Becoming Evil uncovers the historical and modern day reasons to why people do evil and attempts to debunk common explanations for genocide and mass killings. Some of Waller’s other notable works include “Prejudice across America” and “Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America.” Waller takes and in depth look at the societal, psychopathological and cultural reasons that would make a good person commit such heinous acts of evil. “What culture, society, or nation, what ideology, historical prejudice, or ethnic hatred, what psychological profile or cluster of personality traits, what unusual situation or special circumstance is to be deemed the cause of such aberrant human behavior?” (Browning/Waller) Why do humans commit genocide and mass killings?
Societies will always have problems that cause some sort of reaction from individuals who believe that their social stability is being endangered. There have been a number of moral panics which have captivated society in terror and more often than not, owing to unfamiliarity. This essay will discuss the perception of a moral panic and will look at the case of the September 11th Terrorist attack against the United States of America, which triggered a colossal conflict of morality within modern day society. This essay will also analyse terrorism as a perceived deviance, the role of the moral entrepreneur and folk devil, in order to develop a level of understanding to the causes of this particular moral panic and its effects on society.
I have reasons to believe that Mr. White and Herbert is responsible for Herbert’s death. On page (36) Mr. White stated “He didn’t want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away”, even after Sergeant warned Mr. White and even told him to throw it away, he kept the paw anyways.
TED Talks. (Producer). (2008, September 23). Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg
Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perptrators. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The Social Psychology of Good and Evil (pp.21-50). New York: Guilford press.
... fingertip. That is until he revealed that this isn’t his first engagement. Both the movie and the book honored Tom’s cheeky, tricking, and clever ways that left us laughing and smirking.
The City of Beasts by Isabel Allende has a main theme of coming of age. Though the main character, Alex, only ages a few weeks during the novel, he matures a lot, and changes greatly from the beginning to the end. Within the tribe, he completes a ceremony to become a man, but more importantly, his mindset changes, and he becomes more grown up and responsible. Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up listening to stories and legends about the rainforest and indigenous peoples there. The City of the Beasts was created from the memory of these stories, and was written in Allende’s native spanish, to keep it “pure to her past”. The book itself takes place in the Amazon rainforest, and follows an expedition into the rainforest in search