A Few Good Men By Erich Fromm

A Few Good Men portrays the importance of military orders, the reality of the ranking system and how much military leader’s authority can cloud their judgement. Former psychology professor at Yale, Stanley Milgram sought the reasoning behind the blindness of individuals when ordered to perform a task for someone who seems to be an authority figure. His infamous experiment was and is currently being dug through and examined thoroughly. Milgram’s research caught the attention of fellow psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo conducted an experiment with similar interests in mind. He collected 21 men from newspaper advertisements to live in a false prison and live in the prison for two weeks. The experiment lasted six days due to how quickly the experiment escalated and transformed the “prisoners” and “guards” (Zimbardo 116). Their conclusions from both experiments are that power and stress can transform even the strongest willed people. Zimbardo and Milgram discuss the same sort of entitlement Colonel Jessup presumes to order an illegal code red due to his position on the base at Guantanamo Bay; also the entitlement Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee had over the case due to the position his father once had.

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,

In “The My Lai Massacre: A military Crime of Obedience,” Kelman and Hamilton, discuss what compels people to ignore morals in order to please authority. They explain the events that occurr during My Lai and provide evidence from the court cases that followed. The authors claim authorization, routinization, and dehumanization describe why My Lai transpired (Kelman and Hamilton 131-142). In the article,“The Perils of Obedience,” Stanley Milgram tests how far people go to follow authority. He sets up an experiment in which there is a teacher and a learner. The teacher is required to inflict shocks into the learner for every incorrect answer, the teacher was not aware that the learner was in fact an actor. He claims that the teachers did not stop the

Following orders is of the utmost importance in the military. Obedience is what enables the military to operate in an organized and effective manner which is clearly very important during challenging military situations. While an individual can question the notion of obedience in daily life, this luxury is often not available in the military where the grand goals and aims require smooth internal functioning and hierarchical coordination. Indeed, many of the standards that would be frowned upon outside the military are essential to the work's success within. For example, punishment is not deemed to be a positive occurrence in an average person’s life, whereas the military guide maintains that punishment

The purpose of Stanley Milgram writing his “The Perils of Obedience,” is to show to what extent an individual would contradict his/her moral convictions because of the orders of an authority figure (Milgram 78). He constructed an experiment wherein an experimenter instructs a naïve subject to inflict a series of shocks of increasing voltage on a protesting actor. Contrary to Milgram’s expectations, about sixty percent of the subjects administered the highest voltage shock. (Milgram 80). According to Milgram, experiment variations disproved the theory that the subjects were sadists. (Milgram 85). Milgram states that although the subjects are against their actions, they desire to please the experimenter, and they often

Some individuals know to obey their superior, unless they want to be faced with consequences. However, there are occasions individuals choose to be disobedience because they believe it is the right thing to do for the certain situation that they are faced with. This could in an individual being terminated, dishonorably discharged, or suspended. Knowing the outcome of being insubordinate, individuals are usually obedient, even when they are in a situation that is morally wrong. Kelman and Hamilton, in their article, “The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience,” examine how Lt. Calley's unquestioning obedience resulted in the massacre of many women and children. Theodore Dalrymple, in his article, “Just Do What The Pilot Tells You,” asserts that there is a balance between when one should be obedient to orders or one should not be. A movie, A Few Good Men, shows two U.S. Marines, Dawson and Downey, being charged for the murder of a fellow Marine at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and Lt. Daniel Kaffee represents them as their lawyer. Nicholas Leveillee, in his article, “The Role of Obedience in Society,” asserts that one needs to find a balance between obedience and insubordination, so individuals can maintain their individuality and a stable society. Adam Cohen, in his article, “Four Decades After Milgram, We’re Still Willing to Inflict Pain,” asserts that an

     In the short story, 'A Good Man is Hard to Find', the main character is the grandmother. Flannery O'Connor, the author, lets the reader find out who the grandmother is by her conversations and reactions to the other characters in the story. The grandmother is the most important character in the story because she has a main role in the stories principal action. This little old lady is the protagonist in this piece. We learn more about her from her direct conversation with the son, Bailey, her grandchildren, June Star and John Wesley, and the Misfit killer. Through these conversations, we know that she is a lady raised from a traditional background. In the story, her attitude changes

The foundation of today’s society is not in immense chaos or destruction, but rather in an organizational order because of the choice in obedience. As depicted in the movie, “A Few Good Men”, obedience is questioned due to soldiers choosing to obey or not when it presents the case of Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey being disciplined for committing a crime, even if they were only following orders. Eric Fromm, a social psychologist and psychoanalyst, furthers points in whether it is permissible to commit a crime under the pretext of obeying orders in his article, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem”. Comparatively, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, addresses obedience overriding

For years, many have questioned the so called “evil” that seems to be inside of people. There have been multiple experiments set to find the answers to these questions. Although, the real question is, why do people act the way they do? Rob Reimen, director of the movie A Few Good Men is about Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer, who is assigned to defend two Marines accused of murdering Pfc. William Santiago. With the help of Col. Nathan Jessep and Lt. Cdr. JoAnn Galloway, Kaffe brings the accused Marines, Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, into court to prove that they are not guilty of murder because they were “just following orders” (Reimen). However, why did Dawson and Downey follow the orders, if they knew the result would be hurting another? Why did they not rebel against it? Maybe it was because of the situation, or how obedient the two Marines were, or many it is just the plain and simple evil at work. Nevertheless, two articles that mention the experiments to test this is “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. The results gathered from these experiments confirms the belief of hidden wickedness inside human beings. Plus Zimbardo himself made an hypothesis that good people can become evil in the blink of an eye. He based this hypothesis on his prison experiment. Both of these authors addresses how their experiments determine how the obedience and the

Flannery O’Connor, undoubtedly one of the most well-read authors of the early 20th Century, had many strong themes deeply embedded within all her writings. Two of her most prominent and poignant themes were Christianity and racism. By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture. Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now to be treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. The region was part of the 'Christ-haunted ' Bible belt of the Southern States. The spiritual heritage of the region profoundly shaped O 'Connor 's writing as described in her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" (1969). Many

Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey follow the order of Lt. Jonathon Kendrick from Col. Jessup to perform a Code Red on Pfc. William Santiago. Kelman and Hamilton note that "in an authority situation, individuals characteristically feel obligated to obey the orders of authorities, whether or not they correspond with their personal preferences" (Kelman &Hamilton 139). Humans are more likely to follow the orders of a superior or one who appears to be a superior ("When Good People do Bad Things). Rod Powers would develop that by stating in his article "Military Orders" that "military discipline and effectiveness is built on the foundation of obedience to orders" as well as courts have held military members accountable for their actions even while following orders (Powers). Szegedy- Maszak writes that psychologist Herbert Kelman explains that one of the three traits that contribute to one harming another is authorization (Szegedy- Maszak). If this information is true then Col. Jessup would act however he pleased due to the fact that he was the highest ranking official at the Guantanamo Bay Base in Cuba; he had no one to follow or hold him accountable to the ethics of a marine. As an authority figure, no one questioned his authority; Jessup knew that they could not question his order to perform a Code Red. For instance how Rajeev Purohit explains in "Alternatives to Obeying Superior Orders; A Question for the International Superior Court" "the defense of superior orders is impermissible (Purohit). As well as in Milgram's experiment the professor in the room seated behind the teacher giving the prods to continue with the experiment, the superior or the one trusted was the one the teacher relied on (Milgram 79). As one might conclude, humans seem to pick on the weak in life; however, this fear can be taken to an extreme and may be the beginning of dehumanization as well as other harmful

A Few Good Men depicts the court case of two marines, Private First Class Louden Downey and Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson, who had been ordered to perform a "Code Red" on a fellow marine, Private First Class William T. Santiago. Stanley Miligram, a 1970's psychologist who wanted to test obedience in

Everyone wants to believe that they are pure and beautiful. For this reason, we tend to seek out approvals from others including our parents, friends, and other loved ones. An author that uses this concept and transforms it in its own way is Flannery O'Connor. “Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah on March 25, 1925, to Regina Cline and Edward F. O'Connor. She began her education in the city's parochial schools. After the family's move to Milledgeville in 1938, she continued her schooling at the Peabody Laboratory School associated with Georgia State College for Women (GSCW). When she was fifteen, O'Connor, an only child, lost her father to systemic lupus erythematosus, the disease that would eventually take her own life at age thirty-nine” (Gordon,1).She wrote about religious themes and southern life and “is considered one of the best short story writer of the 20th century” (Gordon,1). She uses Southern Gothic elements in her writings such as; sense of isolation, evoke chilling terror in a specific area, revealing fear of institution, “Exposes the Underbelly”, climatic and romantic elements in a grotesque way. Good Country people is short story published 1955 in the collection “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and is about a lady named Mrs. Hopewell who owns a farm and runs it with Mrs. Freeman and is about Mrs. Hopewell daughter named Joy (who later changes her name to Hulga) who is thirty-two years old and lost her leg in a childhood

A Few Good Men is a movie that adequately causes debate among renowned professors, philosophers, and psychoanalysts. The film demonstrates multiple qualities of commands and power in the military, specifically the Marines. A Few Good Men has an early distinguishable gender distinction, where women are subordinate to men, despite being higher in rank. Marines use a punishment known as a Code Red to discipline any soldier who fails to comply with any and all given orders. Philip G. Zimbardo is a professor at Stanford University who composed the article, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in 1973 (Zimbardo 240). Zimbardo’s article covers his experiment which tested college students’ abilities to adapt in either an authoritarian role as a guard

In the movie, A Few Good Men, Daniel Kaffee’s co-council meets with multiple military personnel who in essence carry a sense of entitlement according to their rank in command. Kaffee’s highly skilled team provides strong evidence to prove the innocence of Dawson and Downey through the case of obedience to higher authoritative figures. Crispin Sartwell conveys his opinion throughout his open editorial, “A Genocidal Killer in the Mirror.” Sartwell discusses the qualities needed to manipulate a person to genocide, and the reasonings behind this manipulation (Sartwell 118). He also contributes a majority of his evidence towards retrospective events of which he explains through detailed events. Theodore Dalrymple, a British physician, attempts to create a reasonable balance between the necessity to obey and the circumstances where it is acceptable to disobey in, “Just Do What the Pilot Tell You.” He also utilizes the importance of parental upbringing to attribute the ability to obey in humans (Dalrymple 122). Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst, philosopher, historian, and sociologist, evaluates the varieties of obedience. Fromm also confronts the moral dilemma that contributes to our ability to obey or disobey (Fromm 123). In the movie, “A Few Good Men,” the issue of authoritative power based on rank has a prominent role, of which together Sartwell, Dalrymple, and Fromm logically discuss the reasoning for this theory.