The Nature Of Violence In The Works Of David Williamson

As Americans, living in a egotistical and self centered society, we often think that we are the best, the top 1 percent in every aspect. However, When compared to other countries of the world, America is ranked 14th in education, 44th in health care efficiency, and 101th in peace. But it ranks first in incarceration, 2nd in ignorance, and 3rd in global competitiveness. One can see how the rankings that America is top in are those that promote violence in one way or another. In the book Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach by Jack David Eller, the author discusses violence in American society in one of his chapters. In this chapter, he mentions some social characteristics that represents and plays a role in

Gladwell’s article “Thresholds of Violence” interestingly describes John LaDue and his unique case in very intriguing detail, while also making comparisons between him and many other school shooters. I found my eyes scanning through each paragraph quickly, practically glued to every page. However, something caught my eye halfway through the article and caused me to pause and contemplate a large aspect of Gladwell’s piece. His comparison of the growth of the number of school shooters in the country to a slowing growing riot is simply inaccurate.

Richard Rhodes the author of “Hollow Claims about Fantasy Violence” expresses that the media’s portrayal of violence has no influence on those that view it. One of the first tactics that Rhodes used was by attacking the flaws of Organizations who blamed entertainment for the issues of violent behaviors. He claims that due to increased social control over the years has caused a decline in violence. Rhodes’ used thought-provoking tactics attempting to disprove that violence is influenced from the media instead he believes that violence is stemmed from personal violent encounters. Although Rhodes brought about very good points to dispute that violence is not caused by entertainment, it is not convincing.

The story “Harrison Bergeron”, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a scientific fiction story that is set in 2081. Within this setting, the United States had added 213 amendments, some making the total population completely equal. This equality was not just in a sense of the legality and government, but every person was also physically and mentally equal as well. This total equality was established through things like weight bags, that go around one’s neck to weigh down the physically strong, a mask to cover the faces of those who are naturally good looking, or earphones that go inside the ears of those that are intelligent to emit thought disrupting noises so they would not be any smarter. These items were considered handicaps and were used to

The three stages of violence. According to the article, The Cycle of Domestic violence, there are three stages of violence. They are defined as the tension-building stage, the explosive stage, and the honeymoon stage (Domestic Violence Roundtable, 2008).

Over the last thirty years, significant scholars of American (particularly southern) lynching such as George C. Wright, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, Christopher Waldrep, William D. Carrigan, Amy Louise Wood, and Manfred Berg have written at length about the social structure and cultural context of the collective violence, much of it racially motivated, that plagued the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. With the exception of Wright's and Waldrep's work, lynching scholarship (including my own) has tended to focus more on the structure and context of lynching violence than on its impact on African American communities. Focusing on the violence itself as well as those who perpetrated it, scholars

In Thresholds of Violence by Malcom Gladwell, school shooting happen all the time. There is no way around it. But the question we need to ask is ¨Does each school shooting have a common idea or a pattern?” The answer is no. There is no pattern between any of the shooting because they're different people who have nothing in common. There has been 142 school shootings since Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. When a school shooting happens the police don’t check to see if there's a pattern. Their main focus to to detain the shooter or shooters, keep the kids safe, and help the wounded. So why does it even matter about whether or not there is a pattern. Between every school shootings or bomb threats, the only thing they have in common is that it is

The article “Violence As Fun” by Randall Sullivan brings up this issue, arguing that parents need to be educated on the dangers of allowing their children to watch violent TV programs. The author supports this with evidence from a report conducted by The American Psychological Association, where they concluded that early substance abuse, access to weapons, isolation, and widespread display of violence in media; the latter being greater, contributes to the violent behaviors in adolescents. He also points out that since the 1950s, aggravated assaults have increased seven times. The passage further emphasizes that many TV outlets know the damaging effects that violence in media has on juveniles, yet only a few acknowledge this fact. Sullivan’s

The understanding of the concept of social of construction is in accepting that it is the social process of construction meaning to the things around us. We constructed meaning to those things around us through language and categorizing the world. For example, gender is a social construct in which we created two categories or two genders, male and female. We are put into one of these categories when we are born. Another example could be race, we are again, put into categories based off of our skin color. This social construct is what separates us further as a human from others alike. So what does it mean to say human violence is socially constructed? In understanding this we have to look at other words or language that have been created. Such as the world evil, or the word power. In knowing how these meanings are related to violence we can understand more what classifies as violence and even perhaps, what causes it.

In reading this book what stood out to me the most was how easy it can be to become a victim of violence. We would all like to think that this will never happen to us or that we would never allow for it to happen, but the reality is, it happens in so many forms and can be at the hands of the people we trust the most. This is where I realized one of the most common excuse for the abuse comes from manipulation.

The Violent Tendencies Fed by Violent Words charter in the book The Community of Self, emphasized how exposing children to words of violence through many outlets in society has caused an aggressive, violent nation. Because mental images and experiences makes people who they are (), it is imperative to be selective in what children see and hear. As a child, parents allow children to watch cartoons without considering the violent tendencies subtly displayed in them. For example, the words or images of violence, rebellion, and slavery displayed in cartoons such as the Roadrunner and Bugs Bunny have shaped children and made them just as violent (). Society is even filled with the misconception that people are hopeless victims of our evil

Marko, one of the characters from Saga, once argued “When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it”. These justifications extend far and drag innocent children by the arm into wars. Children dragged into war suffer from displacement, starvation, separation from family, and/or involvement in war, as seen numerous times throughout history. Likewise in Brian K. Vaughan’s comic book Saga, children born during the space war, between the Landfalls and Wreath, share similar fates to children in Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iraq. Throughout space and time, children have been a forethought in society during war, so prior to space exploration, we ought to take preventative measures to protect

I do agree that there can be an overgeneralization when it comes to this topic.Not every cop is the violent, brutal, no holds barred person that we often are fed images and videos of by the media. I do think that the media tends to swing toward the negative, in a lot of cases, not just when it comes to police and violence. That said, I do think that the current focus on police who are involved in brutality and violence can be a good thing because it is bringing visibility to what is clearly a problem, even if that isn't the case for every law enforcement officer out there. I certainly know cops who are great people and who would probably never hurt someone, unless the situation were dire and it was the only choice. That said, I don't

The article by Malcolm Harris is about negative impact of violent movie and video game characters on young people which lead them to violence. However, the author does good job of emotional appeal, most of his article is based on personal opinions of school students. The writer indicates journalists Stephen Singular and Joyce Singular who study widespread of “mass violence” by young American men, but he does not mention about concrete result of their research. Only one reason mentioned by a 26 years old school student was the feeling to be the winner that could cause student taking gun. In addition, he adds quotes that says about fear and concern of students being shot or killed by their fellows. For instance he brings up a student's’ response

Today’s world is chockfull of power and violence. New allegations of sexual harassment surface every day in America. Almost every other week, terrorist attacks and mass shootings cause people to fear for their lives. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is threatening to start a nuclear war with North Korea, while millions of refugees in the Middle East are living in deplorable conditions because of the power vacuum that was created after the Iraq War. With irresponsible people in power and leaders and rebels turning to violence, what lies in store for our global society? Violence and power obviously play roles in social change, but how do scholar citizens reconcile this bitter truth? Using Hannah Arendt’s “On Violence,” Odon Von