“ You can’t handle the truth! Son we live in a world that has walls, and those have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it you, you Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury, you have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence while grotesque and incomprehensible, to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you talk about parties; you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall! We use words like honor, code, loyalty, We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something, you use them as a punch line. …show more content…
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is the place where the movie takes place. Two Marines named Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey are being charged with assault and murder of Private William Santiago. In the middle of the night Dawson and Downey attack Santiago and beat him as well as stuffing a rag into his mouth, Santiago then died shortly after due to respiratory complications. Lieutenant Joanne Galloway thinks that Dawson and Downey were just following orders given to them by their command. Galloway thinks this was part of the Marine's unofficial "Code Red". A “Code Red” is where there is self policing within the ranks of the platoon. Galloway believes that there was no intent of murder by Dawson and Downey. Galloway is described as a lawyer who seeks fairness and justice at no matter the cost and wants to be assigned the case, but she has no trial experience in the Navy . This leads to the Navy assigning Lt. Daniel Kaffee to be Dawson and Downey's lead defense and counsel .Kaffee is a Naval lawyer who also has no trial experience, but he has a history of taking plea bargains for his clients’ no matter their wants or innocence. Galloway still manages to become co-counsel in the case. Kaffee and Galloway also have an assistant in Lieutenant Sam Weinberg assigned to the case. The three have to decide what to do for the defense of Dawson and Downey. This is not an easy task because all …show more content…
The charges are are real life charges with one minor tweak. The movie did a great job of showing what a military court martial is like as well. They gave the members real life ranks, assigned the correct members to the defense, and the courtroom ran exactly the same way it is in real life. The only issue with the Hollywood effect in regards to Jessup. At the end of the movie he is detained for admitting to ordering the “Code Red”. However they do not explain what he will be charged with or what happens to him. Both Jessup and the platoon commander Lt. Kendrick should be charged with perjury. They both lied multiple times under oath, which is the definition of perjury. On top of that charge Jessup would be looking at a slew of charges. Withholding evidence for trying to cover up what happened during the investigation. Intimidation would be the next charge due to making Kendricks, and other Marines fearful of repercussions of going against him. Lastly he would be charged with conduct unbecoming of an officer. This would be the main military charge for Jessup. Now while this should result in a lot of jail time, in real life the result of this case against Jessup would end up as a plea bargain. In exchange for no charges Jessup would agree to retire early and retain full benefits. While this seems like a unreasonable thing, it is actually very common in the military whenever
Conover begins his investigative journey as he goes through the training required to become a prison guard. The process that each potential guard has to graduate from highly resembles that of which the military uses. Perfectly made beds, matching uniforms, roll calls, shooting practice, and psychological tests are all engrained into the schedules of potential guards. When this realizations strikes the author he says, “It dawned on me that I had reported to boot camp.” The emphasis on uniformity and discipline clearly showed the correlation those who controlled prisons saw between the prisons and warzones. The rhetoric is nearly identical as well, as evidenced by the “sergeant” who states,” The gray uniforms are the god guys, and the green uniforms are ...
In two of the three books in this series - Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, and Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover - one character that was prominent was Zach Goode. However, Zach is an enigmatic character, whose relationship with Cammie - not to mention Zach himself - changed rapidly. After taking a closer look at Zach’s character, it is quite easy to find some very interesting things.
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.
People are like pieces of various, mind-blowing art projects; they come in all shapes and sizes, and some are more detailed than others. Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Possibility of Evil”, provides a specific example in one character. Miss Strangeworth is introduced, and she can be described as arrogant, outgoing, and meddlesome. Miss Strangeworth’s character can be analyzed by considering what she does, what the narrator says about her, and how other characters interact with her.
In A Few Good Men Lt. Daniel Kaffee is assigned to defend two marines, Lance Col. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, in the investigation of a murdered marine in their t...
...display how the average citizen would see war for the first time. Colonel Kelly sees her as “vacant and almost idiotic. She had taken refuge in deaf, blind, unfeeling shock” (Vonnegut 100). To a citizen who even understands the war process, war is still heinous and dubiously justified when viewed first hand. The man who seems to have coldly just given away her son’s life without the same instinct as her has participated in this heinous wartime atrocity for so long, but it only affect her now because she cannot conceive of the reality of it until it is personally in front of her. That indicates a less complete political education of war even among those who war may have affected their entire lives. The closeness and the casualties of this “game” will affect her the most because she has to watch every move that previously could have been kept impartial and unviewed.
Corporal Jones posted his description of the events on his blog which included that the operation took place on Pakistani territory, a detailed description of the entry route his unit used to travel into Pakistan, and he mentioned his commanding officer’s violation of military protocol, which may have led to the ambush and deaths of his fellow marines.
The story of A Good Man Is Hard to Find begins as a family road trip, but tragically ends when a family of six cross paths with an escaped convict. Set in rural Georgia around the 1940s, Grandmother, her son Bailey, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren plan a vacation to Florida. While en route, they’re involved in a car accident that leads to a chance encounter with a murderous convict, The Misfit, and his two companions. Confronted with their own mortality, can this somewhat dysfunctional family escape with their lives from these unfavorable circumstances? Dictionary.com defines the word mortality as the state or condition of being subject to death; mortal character, nature or existence. The idea of mortality in this story not only signifies physical death, but also calls into question the condition of the character’s virtue. The writer of A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor, explores the concepts of mortality and salvation through her use of foreshadowing, characters, and symbolism.
In the short story Good People by David Foster Wallace, Lane Dean and his girlfriend Sheri Fisher are two Christians with a troubling choice ahead of them, and finds himself questioning his own ethics as a Christian. The question on whether or not they should abort their baby is making the main character question everything he has ever known and believed in. While his girlfriend is described as a model Christian and a good hard-working woman, he is described as a man who would be stuck outside of the Dante’s Inferno chased by hornets for all time. He has not the conviction to stand and speak on what he thinks is right or even to decide on what he believes is right in the first place. He is ruled by fear and never stops questioning his own convictions. Not once in the story does the character make a concrete decision and leaves his girlfriend alone in a time of uncertainty. If only for this reason alone his actions are unethical to the standards of what a man in our society should act like. Any action taken out of fear is hardly ever an ethical one. As the narrator explains his
"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
Besides, his actions continued to be abusive when Claudio’s sister, Isabella, comes to beg for her brother’s life. He proposes Isabella to sleep with him and only then he would agree not to sentence Claudio to death. In this case, he also uses his authority to gain what he wants, which is obviously an abuse of power. Another example of the abuse of power is in “A Few Good Men.” In the movie two U.S. Marines, Dawson, and Downey, are judged in a court-martial for killing their colleague, Private Santiago and are defended by LT Kaffee with the assistance of Cmdr. Galloway. The defenders are suspicious about the details of the murder and the storyline about Santiago. According to it, Santiago was not respecting commands, requiring to be transferred and his fellow Marines decided to train him into a better Marine. They suspect that the “Code Red,” which is an extrajudicial punishment, was ordered and carried out by two Marines. De facto, “Code Red” was ordered by Colonel Jessep, and LT Kaffee can make him confess it under pressure in the court-martial. Thus, Colonel’s example also shows abusive behavior as he used his power to achieve what he wanted bearing in mind the fact that U.S. Marines could not disobey orders. Therefore, it could be seen that law enforcement does not always mean applying the letter of the law and following the rule
Reports confirm seven Americans work on the rig, which borders the Chinese-Vietnamese maritime boundary. An American engineer has told the CO of the LCS that the resupply ship was attacked by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and has sunk. The engineer believes there are survivors in the water, the rig is also under PLA attack, and he is pleading for rescue. The PLA Navy ship has contacted the CO of the LCS and has made it clear that this is a police action dealing with illegal activities, and the American ship should stay outside a 10 mile radius from the oil rig. The moral dilemma for the CO is saving the seven Americans but risking the lives of his sailors and/or losing the ship, or sacrificing the seven Americans to comply with Chinese demands. Not only does the CO have a moral dilemma, but he also has maritime rules and regulations to follow and the foundations of Navy
The camp Heller describes is bureaucratic in the worst possible way and the conversation exhibits those characteristics of bureaucracy that Heller most loathes: illogical operation, inability to take action, lateral actions (in which no real gain is made), and a maelstrom of regulations which work against each other. One way the interrogation scene mirrors the themes of the book is that the logic employed by the military police officers is totally illogical. Heller presents this as a major theme in his novel: throughout the book, the thought processes of agents of the military make no sense whatsoever and those thought processes are portrayed through inagents' words.... ...
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,
The main protagonist of the story, Elizabeth Bennet (nicknamed both Lizzy and Eliza), is the second daughter in the Bennet family. Second only to her elder sister in beauty, Elizabeth’s figure is said to be “light and pleasing,” with “dark eyes,” and “intelligent…expression” (24). At 20 years old, she is still creating her place in society. Known for her wit and playful nature, “Elizabeth is the soul of Pride and Prejudice, [she] reveals in her own person the very title qualities that she spots so easily” (“Pride and Prejudice”) in others. Her insightfulness often leads her to jump to conclusions and think herself above social demand. These tendencies lead her to be prejudice towards others; this is an essential characteristic of her role