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Entitlement In A Few Good Men

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Professor of American Literature Sarah Churchwell once said, “People who are given whatever they want soon develop a sense of entitlement and rapidly lose their sense of proportion.” In the famous movie A Few Good Men, Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, who is masterfully played by Jack Nicholson, exudes arrogance in his every action throughout the crime fiction thriller. Furthermore, Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee uses his late father’s past occupation of United States’ Attorney General to obtain his own sense of entitlement and invincibility. Two independent scenarios occur in the film that support this theory of entitlement; three different decorated authors also contain evidence as to why this might be the case for Colonel Jessup and Lieutenant Kaffee …show more content…

This scene refers to a situation early on in the film when Lieutenant Kaffee is late to a meeting with his fellow comrades. Unprepared and disrespectful, he is still assigned a case to defend two marines who have killed another. No punishment for neither being late to the meeting nor being unprepared and disrespectful to his equals. Zimbardo and Milgram alike would likely begin by both regressing to their previous points in proving that submission to a person causes the entitlement feeling in that person’s mind; both of which concluded with these results in their respective experiments (Z&M 84,113). However, specialized writer and editor, Kori Ellis, would refute that this is the only reason that Kaffee feels as entitled and invincible that he indeed feels. “Spoiled kids often develop into self-absorbed adults with a lack of self-control and a major sense of entitlement,” she writes. Furthermore, she illustrates that these spoiled children, as adults, carry this sense of entitlement throughout their lives causing them to be disliked and frowned upon in the work force (Ellis). Quick, concurring comments would likely be made by School Age Children Expert Katherine Lee when she discusses the effects on children as a result to a lack of discipline throughout her article, “Surprising Reasons Why We Need to Discipline Our Children.” Discipline is essential to a child’s proper development and a lack of discipline is detrimental, she illustrates. This causes the child to struggle respecting others, similar to how Kaffee feels throughout the duration of the film especially coming to focus in the meeting scene discussed (Lee). Lieutenant Kaffee’s father, as previously mentioned, was the attorney general of the United States: To put this in perspective, the only authority to this position is the President of the United States. There was

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