The Blind Obedience in “The Lottery” “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson written and published in 1948‚ takes place on June 27th in a small town of three hundred people. Villagers gather together at around ten o’clock for one of the main rituals called ‘the lottery‘‚ which takes place in the central square. “The lottery was conducted as were the square dances” (Jackson 31) illustrating the timely scheduled event. It is a normal day with “the fresh warmth of a full summer day” (Jackson 1). The men
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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson tells us about the absurdness of blind obedience. The story begins when the people of the village began to gather in the square. Some of the children are gathering stones. The narrator was like making a warning earlier in the story by mentioning the pile of stones and the way the older people distance themselves from it. "They stood together‚ away from the pile of stones in the corner‚ and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed
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Blind Obedience While sitting in church on Sunday going through the same motions of every Sunday‚ my son leans over to ask‚ "Why do we have to stand up for this prayer?" My response "because we are supposed to". Reading "The Children ’s Story" by James Clavell‚ made me think a little more about this question that I had no answer for. A person needs to be able to explain why he does what he does. Children are innocent and unknowing; they are like a blank piece of paper waiting to be filled
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Milgram’s infamous 1963 study into the nature of obedience is often portrayed in the media as strong evidence for an innate human predisposition to obedience‚ “resistance is futile” (Parker‚ 2007) when it comes to the human condition to obey – even in a “destructive” (Milgram‚ 1963) sense. As Milgram (1963) himself states‚ obedience as a concept is one of the most fundamental aspects of society‚ and much has frequently been made of drawing parallels with the atrocities carried out by the Third Reich
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Blind Obedience in The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical story that illustrates the emotional deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman‚ who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression‚ searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/doctor‚ John‚ which requires strict bed rest and a prescribed forbidding from any mental stimulation
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Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” shows humanity’s blind acceptance of tradition. This short story presents the tendency in human nature to hold to the status quo without critical thinking. The townspeople’s failure to understand the purpose behind the lottery‚ Old Man Warner’s condemnation of non-conformity‚ and the townspeople’s emotionless killing of Mrs. Hutchinson shows a culture’s blind acceptance of tradition. First‚ the townspeople show their blind acceptance of tradition in their failure
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Every area of life has some kind of rules‚ sometimes these rules are easy to abide by and other times they may not be. Even though we may not always agree with the rules that are laid down for us‚ many times we follow them because of our obedience towards authority figures. We tend to follow the rules of our authority because they generally know what is best for us and know what the right thing to do is. However‚ there may be times in which our authority figure is telling us to do something that
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Obedience Some of the darkest times in history have resulted from passive obedience‚ not from large acts of violence. Howard Zinn‚ a social activist‚ once stated “Historically‚ the most terrible things – war‚ genocide‚ and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience‚ but from obedience.” In many instances‚ leaders or dictators have taken over a specific group of people and caused them to obey their commands by frightening them with authority. Obedience appears as the main cause of war‚ genocide
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Society’s Tendency to Pass on Responsibility The Obedience to Authority Experiment of Stanley Milgram is one of the most studied experiments in American history due to its wide-ranging social implications. The study gained popular attention because it aimed to provide some insight as to why the Holocaust had escalated in such a way. The study was designed around testing the degree of inflicted pain strangers would give to others‚ under orders by an experimenter. Not only did the study defy what
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Obedience is a form of social influence that occurs when a person yields to explicit instructions on orders from an authority figure. Obedience is compliance with commands given by an authority figure. In the 1960s‚ the social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a famous research study called the obedience study. It showed that people have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures. Milgram’s Obedience Study Milgram told his forty male volunteer research subjects that they were participating
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