Analyzing Stanley Milgram's Article 'The My Lai Massacre'

Nicole Khamutov

Comparative Analysis

November 5, 2014

Obedience to Authority

Obedience to authority has been seen around the United States for many centuries but there have been many positives and negatives. The reasoning behind why people follow any order given has attracted many opinions from the world of psychology. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist professor at Yale University, showed obedience to authority in his article “The Perils of Obedience.” The other article is “The My Lai Massacre” which was written by Herbert Kelman, a social ethics professor at Harvard University, and V. Lee Hamilton, a professor at the University of Maryland. The article discusses the reasoning behind the killings of 350 men, women, and children in the

60s. Both articles are lenses for A Few Good Men. In the movie and articles, they all show the possible effects of obeying authority to a potentially dangerous extent.
A Few Good Men is a fictional drama written 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 because they obeyed the unlawful orders of their superior for a “Code Red.” A “Code Red” is an act done to put people back in line within the Marines Corps. The movie focuses on the struggles that are being faced by Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, a lawyer for the US Navy, and the process of finding evidence to prove that the crime does not point to the Marines but points to the man who gave the order, Colonel Nathan R. Jessup.
In Kelman and Hamilton’s “The My Lai Massacre,” they wrote about the acts that were performed by the United States military during the Vietnam War. The soldiers of Company C, 20th Infantry Regiment, and the 11th Brigade went into the villages to kill Viet Cong enemies. Afterwards, they destroyed the towns and killed 347 men, women, children, and small infants. Soldiers mutilated the bodies of several women and some were also gang-raped. Twenty-six military men were charged but only one was attaint for the killings. The commanding officer, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., was found guilty for the actions because he was the one who commissioned the order.
In Milgram’s “The Perils of Obedience,” volunteers took on the role of being a teacher and administrated shocks to the learner whenever they got an answer wrong. “He is told that he will be read lists of simple word pairs, and that he will then be tested on his ability to remember the second word…Whenever he makes an error, he will receive electric shocks of increasing intensity” (Milgram 78). In reality, there was no shock given to the learner. Instead, there would be recordings of each shock level that would be played each time they answered a question incorrectly. In the experiment, the teachers were able to administrate a potentially lethal shock to a learner because a person who appeared to be in a position of authority was watching over them.
The soldiers in My Lai, although possibly misunderstood the orders that were given, ultimately did what their commanding officer ordered them to do.

The Marines in the film may have also been under the impression that they would not be responsible for any harm which Santiago may endure. Milgram could confirm this argument when he states, “The essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions” (Milgram 87). Dawson and Downey followed the orders from Jessup and did not see themselves responsible for the death of

Santiago.
According to Milgram’s experiment, harmless people have the ability to do things that they would otherwise see as morally unjust on another individual. This relates back to A Few Good Men when Kaffee asks Dawson why they would perform the “Code Red” on Santiago and he simply stated that they were ordered to harass him to train him because they were following orders from Colonel Jessup. Milgram believes that when an individual is placed in a precarious situation, they will obey the orders that were given to please the person holding authority.
In A Few Good Men, Dawson and Downey were not found guilty of murder but instead were dishonorably discharged.

This relates back to “The My Lai Massacre” because Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was found guilty for the criminal offenses and should have been given a life sentence but instead he served three and a half years under house arrest. The Milgram’s experiment, it shows that people are not inclined to question authoritative figures. It is apparent that this is a known occurrence by observing the My Lai Massacre in which the soldiers were not charged for their actions and why Dawson and Downey were not charged with murder. They were simply following orders from the authoritative figure and that they were not supposed to be questioning in the first place. Dawson and Downey may have realized that by not following orders, their punishment may have been more severe than the potential punishment for hazing and ultimately murdering Santiago. When a person in power makes a decision but is not directly involved with the execution, they are still to be held accountable for the

consequences.
Obedience to authority, while not always destructive; has the potential to cause people to perform actions that they would otherwise never consider. The Milgram experiment reveals that people will continue to obey their given orders even if they can hear the cries of pain from the person they're supposedly hurting. We see the exact same behavior in the My Lai massacre and A Few Good Men. In both situations we see soldiers who were doing nothing more than following the orders of their superior officers. Downey and Dawson most likely never would have realized that what they were doing was something that, by themselves, they may never have done. Obedience to authority can cause otherwise malicious, heinous acts to seem necessary. Understanding these central motifs of A Few Good Men reveals to us that the film has underlying messages, rather than just the story at hand. And we can use these messages to look at the world around us in a new way.

A Few Good Men. Dir. Rob Reiner. Perf. Tom Cruise. Columbia Tristar and Castle Rock Entertainment. 1992. Dvd.

Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Obedience.” Writing & Reading for ACP Composition, 2nd Edition. Christine R. Farris and Deanna M. Jessup, comps. Pearson Learning Solutions. Boston. Print. 2013.

Kelman, Herbert C., Hamilton, V. Lee. “The My Lai Massacre Writing & Reading for ACP Composition, 2nd Edition. Christine R. Farris and Deanna M. Jessup, comps. Pearson Learning Solutions. Boston. Print. 2013.