Bystanders In The Hangman

Every day many of us are faced with the question, “Should I help?”. Some of us immediately think yes and jump in to help, while others believe it is better to keep walking. The bystander effect happens when a person does not stop and help because they think someone else will. In these situations, some people stand up and respond to the crisis, because they are not worried about what will happen to them but what will happen to the person in crisis. In the novel Night and the poem “The Hangman”, the bystander effect took place because people were afraid to bring attention to themselves. In the film The Hunger Games, however, Katniss Everdeen took a stand because she was not afraid of what will happen to her but what will happen to her sister and others in trouble. This feeling of fear for yourself rather than others is what separates the bystanders from the morally courageous

In the end, nobody took a stand which allowed the hangman to hang everyone left in the town. When the hangman kept hanging more and more victims the narrator said, “No one spoke out of the fear for the hangman’s cloak” (poem). Citizens of the town were too scared to stand up for any of the victims because they didn’t want to be the next person to get hanged. At the end of the poem, when the hangman is about to hang his last victim, he said, “I did no more than you let me do”. The victim then said, “No voice there cried ‘stay’ for me in the empty square” (poem). The hangman said he only had the chance to keep murdering people because nobody stood up and said something about it. It is ironic that the victim said nobody cried for me because when other people were getting hanged he didn’t say anything either. This leads to the bystander effect because the people of the town did not want to say anything since maybe someone else could have said