Dehumanization In A Few Good Men

Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil, Phillip Zimbardo brilliantly explains in his novel The Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo 157). Dehumanization plays a key role in the military, whether it be utilized concerning the enemy or regarding America’s own troops. In A Few Good Men, Downey and Dawson did not have the privilege of being able to refer to Santiago as a person, they simply were ordered to perform a “code red” on a dissatisfactory marine. Zimbardo accounts for Dawson and Downey’s acts by elucidating that dehumanization resembles a “cortical cataract” that clouds one's thinking and fosters the perception that other individuals are less
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, portrays how well-behaved British choirboys are transformed into murderers simply due to routinization. Jack, the child leader, undergoes a frightening metamorphosis into a bloodthirsty dictator. He became a new individual, liberated from shame and self-consciousness (Golding 58). The slaughter commences with the butchery of a boar as the boys venomously chant "Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” Once that alien deed of killing another creature is accomplished, they then relish the fun of killing both animals and their human enemies. The repeated statement of “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” signifies routinization, eventually leading to the murder of other boys (Golding 164). Kelman, Hamilton, and Milgram would synchronously concur that routinization overwhelmed the boys and they succumbed to the mechanized operations designed by the leader. They would also agree that Dawson and Downey were confronted with a comparable situation: their actions were mechanized in order to shun any moral