In the movie, A Few Good Men, directed by award-winning Rob Reiner, Lt. Daniel Espresso defends Private First Class Loudon Downey and Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson as they are being tried for the murder of a fellow Marine. The two soldiers were ordered to execute a “code red,” which is a hazing technique held in place for a soldier who disrespects the Marine code of honor. An internal reaction then occurred when Santiago was tied down and gagged, killing him when his lungs started bleeding. Café and his team then proceeded in court against prosecution to uncover the conspiracy on whether the soldiers were guilty, or just following an order. This film displays the idea of obedience to authority and highlights how far people will go to comply. …show more content…
Revealed from Milgram’s experiment, the environment can affect the way people think in certain situations. The hot temperatures are evident in this scene and Milgram would theorize how this change of location from the United States to a naval base in Cuba affects the ability to follow orders. Staying in an area filled with hostility, heat, and violence makes it more difficult to have a keen sense of reason. Jessup even mentions how “this fuckin’ heat’s making me absolutely crazy” (A Few Good Men). Milgram would also imply that the conditions in Guantanamo Bay affected Jessup’s decision to enforce the red code. Moreover, having an authoritative figure in the proximity is another similarity shared between Milgram and the film. Because Jessup is a high-ranking officer in the Marines, he creates a sense of status and expertise that dominates over Coffee. Milgram describes this belief in his test results, that obedience to authority “is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up” (Milgram 61). This idea supports why individuals please their higher powers of authority by following orders, much like Coffee to …show more content…
This conscience is an example of the “internalized commands and prohibitions of father, accepted by son out of fear” (Fromm 81). Jessup enjoys the intimidation he has on his peers and instills fear in their minds if they fail to obey his commands. Fromm also mentions the humanistic conscience that is absent from Jessup’s thinking because he is proven to have difficulties deciding what is conducive or destructive of life. This idea is the voice present in every human being and the “intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman” (Fromm 81). Jessup fails to think in this conscience when he orders the code red on Santiago and does not care about the consequences. Fromm would suggest that going against this concept creates a decline in morality and corrupts higher powers of authority, like Jessup. If Dawson and Downey were able to disobey this order, they would have grown their morals instead of falling victim to a murder case. Fromm’s main idea asserts that individuals need to decipher between right and wrong, even going as far as disobeying a Marine officer to do what is morally
Comparative Analysis 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;
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.
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.
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
While having lunch at Guantanamo Bay, Kaffee directs a question towards Jessup in an informal way compared to military standards. Jessup immediately becomes angered and demands that Kaffee rephrase his question in a more respectable form because he feels entitled to respect due to his many achievements. Zimbardo would start the conversation off with the matter of a man in a uniform. Being put in a uniform and blatantly told that one is above others and can give orders consequently results in entitlement as seen in Zimbardo’s experiment. As the students are given uniforms and put above the prisoners, Jessup is promoted to the head of Guantanamo Bay and is assured that he is above other soldiers on his compound (Zimbardo 118). Zimbardo would effectively emphasize this parallel association and state how they both resulted in entitlement to command freely what they wanted to command. Nisbett and Ross would agree and logically focus on an additional parallel of the change of environment of the two examples. The students went from a mainly submissive state as a student to professors and then were jumped to a position of such authority and command over the “prisoners.” Likewise, Jessup went from an under ranking officer to the a major commander in the military with lesser officers suddenly at his exposal. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, M.D. is a psychiatrist that states, “Entitlement resembles a right, something
In Paul Tillich’s 1957 work Dynamics of Faith, he mentions that there are six major components of faith. These six components of faith describe the Franciscan perspective of “faith”. According to Tillich, the first component of faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned”. The second component of faith is that it is supposed to be at the center of all of our personal lives and everything that we do throughout our own individual lives. The third component of faith is that we should have an awareness for “infinite” things such as God himself. The fourth component of faith is that we need to understand that faith can act as fear, fascination, or both of these qualities at the same time. The fifth component of faith is that doubt is a major product that will always exist with faith. The last component of faith is that we need a community in order to have a “language of faith”.
The experiment was to see if people would follow the orders of an authority figure, even if the orders that were given proved to cause pain to the person taking the test. In the “Milgram Experiment” by Saul McLeod, he goes into detail about six variations that changed the percentage of obedience from the test subject, for example, one variable was that the experiment was moved to set of run down offices rather than at Yale University. Variables like these changed the results dramatically. In four of these variations, the obedience percentage was under 50 percent (588). This is great evidence that it is the situation that changes the actions of the individual, not he or she’s morals.
Fromm explains that humans obey orders because of “fear, hate, and greed”, which, in the end, harms humanity (Fromm 125). Agreeing with this idea, Zimbardo states that “self-aggrandizement” is accomplished by “self-deprecation” of others (Zimbardo 109). Christopher Shea’s experiment also backs up the claim that people act for themselves. Shea would concur with Fromm that humans behave greedily (Shea). In contrast, Shea would not believe that people behave to put others down, which is Zimbardo’s beliefs (Shea). Jessup wished to express his authority by giving orders and allowing himself to advance even higher. Jessup harmed Santiago to advance personally; in addition, Dawson and Downey obeyed orders to gain approval from Jessup. Fromm may argue that Dawson and Downey followed commands due to fear. Zimbardo would believe that they thought completing the order was the correct action to be taken. The article “Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity” also connects with Zimbardo’s viewpoint. The article explains why people become passive and eventually deem their actions as correct (Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity). Zimbardo would not consider humans to be passive just blind to the truth. “Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity” would reply that individuals need to rely on their mind and not listen to commands. Both authors believe the marines’ actions
The two Marines did not understand why they were charged with his murder, claiming, “We didn’t do anything wrong.” They claimed that they were only following orders from a superior. To explain the Marines’ behaviors, Milgram would argue that the Marines fell to the pressures of authority. In the article “The Perils of Obedience,” Milgram tests the psychological affects on the “teacher” rather than on the “learner” (Milgram 78) About two-thirds of the test subjects were completely obedient and used the 450-volt shocks, and all of the participants used the painful 300-volt shock (Milgram 80). With these surprising results, Milgram deducts that many of these test subjects carried out these actions because of the authority figure in the room. Coming to a final conclusion, Milgram states that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being (Milgram 86). Obedience to authority is ingrained in children from the day they are born, and they are raised to be obedient and this is why many people are obedient. With Milgram’s conclusion, it would be logical to assume that he would argue that the influence of authority is why Dawson and
...of two marines, to perform a code red on Santiago, the learner. Although no harm was intended, the life of an ailing soldier was brutally taken due to the respect of an order. From Fromm’s outlook on the situation, obedience may sometimes be right, but unfortunately might lead to an unwanted outcome, similar to the circumstances portrayed in A Few Good Men. A person with hateful and self conceited characteristics is someone that most people don’t want to be around. This can impact society by causing less appreciation among people.
When people do bad things, or have bad thoughts does this make them a bad person? This is a loaded question when thinking about a couple characters in a great fictional short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Mary Flannery O’Connor. The well-dressed grandmother (by name only) can be judgmental, dishonest and demanding. She will rally thoughts in her mind, and try to convince others around her what she believes in true. They call a violent man the Misfit; he has the need to kill. Where is self-aware of his actions, the grandmother is not.
The novel Of Mice and Men is also a perfect example of how obeying your conscience is hard. In the end of the novel, George has to face the fact that he has to take care of the problem that Lennie causes when he kills Curley's wife. George's conscience tells him exactly what to do and George knows what he has to do. In this example it is a little different. In other situations people would be afraid of what might happen after, however, in this situation George knows that he will be losing his best friend and in this situation it takes a tremendous amount of bravery to follow your conscience.
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?
pp. 371-377, 2008. Benjamin Jr., Ludy T. & Simpson, Jeffrey A. The Power of the Situation: The Impact of Milgram’s Obedience Studies on Personality and Social Psychology. From an American Psychologist.
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,