3.2 Torture and Into the Dark Chamber
Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians is often considered to be his most powerful work, because it offers a significant addition to the international discourse on torture in South Africa. For Coetzee, it represented a unique challenge to his literary craft, namely, how to present such an atrocity as torture in a novel without repeating it:
For the writer the deeper problem is not to allow himself to be impaled on the dilemma proposed by the state, namely, either to ignore its obscenities or else to produce representations of them. The true challenge is: how not to play the game by the rules of the state, how to establish one’s own authority, how to imagine torture and death on one’s own terms. (Coetzee ed. Atwell, Doubling the Point 364)
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The author stated that “the dark fascination of torture on [him] and many other South African writers”, seems to have two particular reasons (Coetzee ed. Attwell 363). The author summed up, “the first [reason] is that relations in the torture room provide a metaphor, bare and extreme, for relations between authoritarianism and its victims”, and reason two “that the torture room is a site of extreme human experience, accessible to no one save the participants” (Coetzee ed. Attwell 363. The element of torture creates a crisis of comprehension for the Magistrate, as well as for the reader, in Waiting for the Barbarians, however also of portrayal for
War! Horrid War! The atrocities of World War II that the Germans committed in the confines of their concentration camps are all but forgotten. The American novelist, travel writer and journalist Martha Gellhorn knew all too well about the atrocities that occurred at the infamous Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. She gives an expository recount from the point of view of herself and the surviving prisoners of war. She details the prisoners’ stories and her own visit to the camp from after the Americans had liberated it from the Germans in 1945. Gellhorn does so with attention for detail and uses language techniques such as personification to bring the abhorrent scene to life in the reader’s mind. We also learn about the awful treatment of the prisoners and the abominable experiments the Germans conducted.
In “The Case for Torture,” Michael Levin presents logical fallacies that originate at the authors desire to relate the importance of his message. Though his specific argument is a very plausible solution to a taboo problem, the manner in which he presents it has some fallacies that cause it to be unsupported
For this unit, I decided to read Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” The author, Franz Kafka, was an early 20th century middle-class Jew who lived in Prague and wrote mostly in German. The present short story, published in 1919, refers to an unnamed penal colony somewhere in the tropics and focuses on four characters: the commander of the camp, an invited foreign dignitary, a guard, and a victim. The story revolves a twisted idea of justice, where the punishment does not fit the crime, and the condemned does not know neither the charge nor the nature of his punishment. Indeed, justice seems completely irrelevant to the commander who is only fascinated with the torturing as an art and science; the apotheosis of the latter represented with the torturing machine that resembles a CNC router that inscribes the accusation on the skin of the condemned who then dies slowly from bleeding.
David Figueroa Eng. 101A Professor Stern 4/20/15 Final draft In conclusion, in discussions of torture, one controversial issue has been on the use of it. On one hand, the people against torture argue that it is cruel and unusual punishment. On the other hand, those for torture argue that it should be used for the greater good. Others even maintain that under extreme circumstances, it may be admissible if it can save American lives. My own view is that no one should be subjected to cruel punishment because it is not only illegal, unreliable, ineffective, time consuming, it also has too many flaws that could potentially ruin innocent lives. The definition of torture is any act, whether physical or emotional, or maybe both, is intentionally subjected to a specific individual or a group for many reasons. Most of these reasons that torture is administered is for extracting information from an individual or just for punishing him/her for a crime that he/she has committed or is suspected of committing. The use of torture can be used to intimidate a person to give information that may be beneficial for a nation. The use of torture has been used for many centuries. The purposes of using torture have changed over the years as well as the methods in which a person is tortured. One crucial piece that has been established that separates us human beings from barbarians is the prohibition of using torture. There are many reasons why torture has been deemed a crime now in society. There are
In “The Torture Myth”, the author, Anne Applebaum successfully uses logos by including quotes from various sources to support her main claim. Her main claim is the following: “Perhaps it's reassuring to tell ourselves tales about the new forms of "toughness" we need, or to talk about the special rules we will create to defeat this special enemy. Unfortunately, that toughness is self-deceptive and self-destructive. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as well.”(Applebaum) Throughout the piece, she provides several expert testimonies to enforce her claim. The situation of this writing is to clarify what society thinks the effectiveness of torture is compared to the reality. The target audience of this piece is educated people that read the Washington Post, but more specifically law enforcement personnel and or agencies that can possibly use this information in the field. The purpose of this article is to inform society about the misconceptions regarding torture. Although people think that torture is an effective method, because of Applebaum's successful use of logos, diction, and repetition, it is understood that torture is ultimately self-defeating and self-destructive.
In Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture” he argues for the use of torture to save the lives of innocent people. Levin’s main claim is a claim of value, weighing the lives of the innocent against the lives of the guilty. Levin mainly uses hypotheticals to frame his argument as a way to illicit an emotional response from readers. This method is effective because he’s discussing such a serious topic and hypotheticals allow the reader to be immersed in his argument. He frames the discussion around these scenarios that force the reader to think critically and logically about his position. Overall, Levin appeals to emotion to successfully convince readers of his argument.
With Robots becoming a popular part of our everyday lives people are beginning to question if people are treating robots with the same respect that they treat people with. Researchers are also beginning to wonder if there need to be laws to protect robots from being tortured or even killed. Scientists have done research to test and see if people react the same to robots as they would to actual people or animals. In Is it Okay to Torture or Murder a Robot Richard Fisher contemplates the reason on why it is wrong to hurt or kill a robot by using a stern and unbiased tone.
In the novel the Nazis cruelty is shown through how they treat the prisoners. When the Kapos are choosing men for there bunks, they say “You...you...you and you….” with a “pointed a finger”, and Elie describes there expressions “as though choosing cattle or merchandise” (Wiesel 57). This shows that the Nazis do not
During the Holocaust, over six million Jewish people were murdered at the hands of the Nazis, and even those who survived went through horrifying ordeals that they would never forget. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, cruelty has a major impact on the theme of man’s inhumanity to man by showing how the Nazis treat Jewish prisoners during this time in history, and how they act as though they are not even human beings. This cruelty not only shapes the lesson being taught, but is a substantial factor in the purpose of Elie Wiesel writing this memoir. The first example of cruelty and its effects on theme in Night comes from when Elie and his family are being loaded along with seventy-six other people into a small cattle car: “‘There are eighty
Through showing the dark and devastating experiences of the Jews during the holocaust, the emotional appeal the reader experiences is increased. As Anthony Acevedo describes, “... his fellow soldiers beaten, starved, and in some cases executed for trying to escape. Forced to dig tunnels for 12 hours a day in the final weeks of the war, the prisoners were given 100 grams of bread per week and soup made from rats.” (1). While Wiesel in a speech said, “When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies…” (217). Through implementing the theme of inhumanity into an emotional appeal, Elie Wiesel allows the reader to feel as though they were in that situation in a diminished manner. The following quotes, exhibits the theme of inhumanity through the use of different punishment methods against prisoners and the effects.
Within this passage, Equiano’s narrative demonstrates an abrupt encounter with a figure of harmful energy succeeding a time of tranquility within the community. In comparison to Mary Rowlandson’s experience of being taken as an object of collateral, her narration of the attack is marinated in violence and hostility. Rowlandson recalls being trapped in her home, witnessing the unleashing of a multitude of bullets sent toward her family, and proceeded to end the lives of her family without mercy. While Rowlandson also suffered the violence of a fiery war scene, both authors’ descriptions of their “taking” depict that of an immediate encounter with danger and the inability to resist the horror of forceful removal, as these are examples of methods by which captivity narratives are typically introduced to the reader (Campbell, Early American Captivity Narratives). A captivity narrative also features the subject’s strong desire to escape for freedom, yet struggles to execute a plan due to the suffering of newly-introduced oppression by their traffickers; “I therefore
Crime and punishment was much different in medieval times than it is now. In today’s ages you may get sent to jail or prison, or have to do community services. While back then you may be put on the Catherine Wheel, be Drawn Hanged And Quartered, or even be put in the Scavenger's Daughter device. There were many other ways of brutal, diverse ways to make a point
Clive Barnett, from University of Reading, Department of Geography, emphasizes that “Coetzee’s fiction has been inserted into dominant moral representations of apartheid” (300). Where, everything on this novel can be related to apartheid South Africa. The white professor, and his daughter represents the disgrace and shame of whites. What happened to them, the attack and Lucy’s rape, represents the punishment to the white community for the crimes they have committed against the black community. Also, Lucy’s reaction to the event was to not press charges against the rapists, “This is my life. I am the one who has to live here. What happened to me is my business, mine alone, not yours, and if there is one right I have it is the right not to be put on trial” (Disgrace 133), and stay in her house and face the consequences. Moreover, Lucy thought that was “the price to pay” in order for her to stay there, and J. M. Coetzee quoted in Disgrace:
Morality is adaptable in extreme situations. The Holocaust is an example of what happens to one’s morality when forced to adapt to animalistic behavior in order to survive. Life in Auschwitz required a purging of one’s human dignity for survival. Prisoners were constantly exposed to perpetual dehumanization, which inevitably led to the dehumanization, and restoration of one’s mental, physical, and social adaptation. Because of this, one’s morality begins to erase. It is in the adaptation of living in a merciless world that the line separating right and wrong begins to blur. Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, both represent how morality and ethics are challenged in the means of survival.
Torture (Latin torquere, “to twist”), in law, infliction of severe bodily pain either as punishment, or to compel a person to confess to a crime, or to give evidence in a judicial proceeding. Among primitive peoples, torture has been used as a means of ordeal and to punish captured enemies. Examination by torture, often called the “question,” has been used in many countries as a judicial method. It involves using instruments to extort evidence from unwilling witnesses.