Examples Of Obedience In A Few Good Men

“In the heart of nation’s capital, in a courthouse of the U.S government, one man will stop at nothing to keep his honor, and one will stop at nothing to find the truth.” This tagline helps to sum up the tone of the film A Few Good Men. Two soldiers caught in the middle of right and wrong will keep there hope and loyalty high as they wish for the best. Will the instigator of it all be pressured through his own anger to reveal the truth? Rob Reiner presents Col. Nathan R. Jessep as having an exaggerated self opinion while using his power for evil, based on dispositional factors.

She illustrates how oppressive systems and ideologies can compel individuals to commit acts that are considered evil by society. Through historical examples such as the Holocaust and slavery, Arikha demonstrates how individuals can be influenced by larger forces beyond their control, leading them to engage in morally reprehensible actions. In addition, Arikha draws upon psychological theories to support her argument that evil is not inherent but situational. She discusses the influence of group dynamics, obedience to authority, and cognitive biases in driving individuals to commit harmful acts. By analyzing famous psychological experiments such as the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment, Arikha highlights how ordinary people can be swayed to engage in evil behavior under certain conditions.

In A Few Good Men, both Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey were obedient to Col. Nathan R. Jessup’s order to give Santiago the Code Red, even though it went against their preset morals. Dawson saw, through his own conscience, that hurting another person because of small mistakes was immoral. But because of his believe in the marines code, “Unit, Corp, God, Country,” he was unable to allow himself to disobey a direct order. Author Milgram explored this same issue in his experiment. He asked why people followed orders no matter the negative effects it has on other people. In the study, roughly 60% of the test subject followed all orders to harms others. After the studies, Milgram inferred that this was because people have an underlying fear of disobeying a superior and do not trust their own

Humanity will always question the idea of obedience. Two prestigious psychologists, Stanley Milgram and Philip G. Zimbardo, conducted practical obedience experiments with astonishing results. Shocked by the amount of immoral obedience, both doctors wrote articles exploring the reasoning for the test subjects ' unorthodox manners. In "The Perils of Obedience" by Milgram and "The Stanford Prison Experiment" by Zimbardo, the professionals reflect their thoughts in a logical manner. Milgram 's experiment consisted of a teacher, learner, and experimenter: the teacher was the test subject and was commanded to administer a shock by the experimenter. Upon switching the generator on, the learner-who was actually an actor-would jerk, cry, and occasionally seem unconscious. Expecting most subjects to stall the experiment, Milgram witnessed the exact opposite. Zimbardo, on the other hand, staged a mock prison, whereas half the subjects were guards and the other half were prisoners. Every test subject knew they were in an experiment and complied with the two week trial. However, the majority of the test subjects-particularly the guards-found themselves fitting into the mock prison all too well: abusing, insulting, and yelling obscenities at prisoners was commonplace, compelling many prisoners to appear insane. The driving force for immoral obedience is contributed to several factors: As seen in the film A Few Good Men by director Rob Reiner, when obedience causing harm undergoes

A Few Good Men portrays the importance of military orders, the reality of the ranking system and how much military leader’s authority can cloud their judgement. Former psychology professor at Yale, Stanley Milgram sought the reasoning behind the blindness of individuals when ordered to perform a task for someone who seems to be an authority figure. His infamous experiment was and is currently being dug through and examined thoroughly. Milgram’s research caught the attention of fellow psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo conducted an experiment with similar interests in mind. He collected 21 men from newspaper advertisements to live in a false prison and live in the prison for two weeks. The experiment lasted six days due to how quickly the experiment escalated and transformed the “prisoners” and “guards” (Zimbardo 116). Their conclusions from both experiments are that power and stress can transform even the strongest willed people. Zimbardo and Milgram discuss the same sort of entitlement Colonel Jessup presumes to order an illegal code red due to his position on the base at Guantanamo Bay; also the entitlement Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee had over the case due to the position his father once had.

The motion picture A Few Good Men challenges the question of why Marines obey their superiors’ orders without hesitation. The film illustrates a story about two Marines, Lance Corporal Harold W. Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey charged for the murder of Private First Class William T. Santiago. Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is known to be lackadaisical and originally considers offering a plea bargain in order to curtail Dawson’s and Downey’s sentence, finds himself fighting for the freedom of the Marines; their argument: they simply followed the orders given for a “Code Red”. The question of why people follow any order given has attracted much speculation from the world of psychology. Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist,

For years, many have questioned the so called “evil” that seems to be inside of people. There have been multiple experiments set to find the answers to these questions. Although, the real question is, why do people act the way they do? Rob Reimen, director of the movie A Few Good Men is about Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer, who is assigned to defend two Marines accused of murdering Pfc. William Santiago. With the help of Col. Nathan Jessep and Lt. Cdr. JoAnn Galloway, Kaffe brings the accused Marines, Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey, into court to prove that they are not guilty of murder because they were “just following orders” (Reimen). However, why did Dawson and Downey follow the orders, if they knew the result would be hurting another? Why did they not rebel against it? Maybe it was because of the situation, or how obedient the two Marines were, or many it is just the plain and simple evil at work. Nevertheless, two articles that mention the experiments to test this is “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. The results gathered from these experiments confirms the belief of hidden wickedness inside human beings. Plus Zimbardo himself made an hypothesis that good people can become evil in the blink of an eye. He based this hypothesis on his prison experiment. Both of these authors addresses how their experiments determine how the obedience and the

A person’s decisions, whether they are following directions or are making their own choices, will change their lives. The effect of a decision is played out in the movie A Few Good Men. In the movie, Lance Cpl. Harold W. Dawson and Pfc. Louden Downey’s decision to follow the orders of Col. Nathan R. Jessup to perform a code red on Pfc. Santiago, a “sub-par marine”, results in them accidentally killing Santiago. Dawson and Downey are originally blamed for Santiago’s death; however, Lt. Daniel Kaffee is able to convince the jury to drop the charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Despite this, both Marines are given a dishonorable discharge for performing the code red on Santiago (A Few Good Men). In Erich Fromm’s article, “Disobedience

This report will compare two experiments; Asch 's conformity experiment and Milgram 's obedience experiment. The two experiments will be compared for validity and their ethics. In addition, this report will take into consideration Zimbardo 's Stanford Prison experiment and the Lucifer Effect. To analyse how obedience and conformity theories can be used as an example of why good people can turn bad. This report will also look at how obedience and conformity can be applied to the criminal justice system.

It is interesting to see human behavior when put into a difficult situation that may force them to harm others when they do not want to, but will anyways. It is human nature to always do what is best for themselves and their safety, but people tend to harm others when they can shift the blame off themselves for causing them harm. As for example the milgram experiment is a great example showing people will cause harm under given command. This not true for everyone, but for most people it is. People will harm others, but kept telling the instructor that they want to stop. The instructor told them they must keep on going, the first response would be i do not want to blamed for hurting the person, soon as instructor took the responsibility then the they would continue to cause pain. A movie that takes a closer look into this situation is A Few Good Men directed by Red Reiner. Some of the main actors were Tom Cruise who played Lt. Daniel Kaffee and is a lawyer that is defending the marines in a murder case, Jack Nicholson who played Col. Nathan R. Jessup is the leader of marines stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Demi Moore who played LT. Cdr. Joanne Galloway is part of the team with Kaffee to defend marnie in the murder case , James Marshall who played Pfc. Louden Downey is the marine who is trialed for murder and disorderly conduct, and Kevin Bacon who played Lt. Sam Weinberg is the Prosecutor . To quick run over the movie, it

A Few Good Men is a movie that adequately causes debate among renowned professors, philosophers, and psychoanalysts. The film demonstrates multiple qualities of commands and power in the military, specifically the Marines. A Few Good Men has an early distinguishable gender distinction, where women are subordinate to men, despite being higher in rank. Marines use a punishment known as a Code Red to discipline any soldier who fails to comply with any and all given orders. Philip G. Zimbardo is a professor at Stanford University who composed the article, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” in 1973 (Zimbardo 240). Zimbardo’s article covers his experiment which tested college students’ abilities to adapt in either an authoritarian role as a guard

In the movie ‘A Few Good Men’ with Tom Cruise, John Nicholson and Demi Moore, characters are showing the human traits, human’s relational nature and despite the capacity for sin, humans are good. The movie reflects the theme of what it means to be human from the perspective of Catholicism as it explores the traits and principles that shapes humanity.

The first example that proves people chose to be evil is the cruelty of the Holocaust. The people in control of the holocaust were Adolf Hitler and his army (followers). The Holocaust was a crime where the Nazis didn’t like the jews, so they murdered them. He also did not like the

Sometimes we wonder why people do things. Is it because they were forced to? Maybe they were pressured into it, or maybe they thought it was the right thing to do. In the book The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo he studies the psychological motives of humans and situational personalities. Zimbardo produced an experiment called the “Stanford prison experiment” which put one group of students as guards and another as the prisoners. The main point of the experiment was to watch the prisoners and see how they reacted to being detained; however, when the experiment was conducted it was the guards who were more interesting to study.

Obedience is a concept that many people have instilled into them in some form from a young age. This act of listening to someone that is in a higher standing than oneself takes many different forms in a person’s life, but obedience can quickly evolve when in dangerous territories such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The role that obedience plays in this becomes much more important when faced with life or death situations. The film, A Few Good Men, directly explored and elaborated upon this topic. This movie features characters such as Lt. Daniel Kaffee, Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway, Capt. Jack Ross, LTJG Sam Weinberg, and Colonel Nathan R. Jessep who were played by: Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollak, and Jack Nicholson respectively. Directed by Rob Reiner, this film centered around the court case of Lance Corporal Dawson and Private First Class Downey when they supposedly acted upon orders in punishing a fellow officer with a “code red”, which resulted in the man’s death. This incident occurs at a military base that is stationed within yards of the border. In A Few Good Men, the setting plays a major part in how the events of the crime play out: the danger that the men feel, and the authority which the situation places upon men all play into the factor of how obedience lead to this man’s death.