ipl-logo

Is Annie's Identity In The Book Of The Dead By Edwidge Danticat

614 Words3 Pages

A wanted criminal. That is what Annie’s father in “The Book of the Dead” by Edwidge Danticat represents in reality. He is a former prison guard in Haiti under the Duvalier dictatorship that tortured prisoners and has a visible scar as a reminder of this time in his life. He tortured others and is now hiding his past in fear of punishment. He fled Haiti and avoids telling the truth regarding his hometown in fear of being traced. He is a wanted criminal eluding justice. He followed orders that harmed humans and performed criminal acts. Yet, as a character we do not hate him, but we sympathize with him. Three parts of his identity as a prison guard play a role in this: his development into a torturer, his PTSD, and his hiding. These three …show more content…

While the story does not share any specific horror stories of him torturing prisoners, it does state that when he stumbled into his future wife, he “was about to go back and do something bad, very bad” (Danticat 197). The story also describes the torture that Gabrielle Fonteneau’s father had to suffer through. One of the guards did not like him scratching the walls, “so he pulled out all his fingernails with pliers” (Danticat 196). This horror is told in a fictional story in this case, yet this cruelty is also seen in real life. The Stanford Prison experiment, conducted in 1971, studied the psychology of the prisoner/prison guard relationship by randomly assigning college male volunteers as prisoners or prison guards. The prison guards received no training, but they became ruthless; they chained the prisoners’ legs together and put bags over their heads on bathroom runs, took away their clothes, beds, and showers as a form of punishment, and even limited their eating (Zimbardo). The behavior became so extreme that this two-week experiment was shut down after six days. The lesson learned was that when regular people are given too much power, they transform into oppressors (Konnikova). This was seen in the case of Annie’s father; he was given power over others and he turned into an abuser of this power and tortured the

Show More
Related

Yima Territorial Prison Essay

1409 Words | 6 Pages

The Yuma Territorial Prison On July 1, 1876, the first seven prisoners were moved into the Yuma Territorial Prison and every day the prison was still under construction for another 33 years. The budget the prison could not pass was $25,000. The prison was based off a contest that was manufactured on making the prison. The prison was located Prison Hill Road in the historic part of Yuma, not far away from Yuma Crossing-Quartermaster Depot.

Read More

Kyle Patrick Alvarez's 'The Stanford Prison Experiment'

749 Words | 3 Pages

In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment, 20 college aged boys are selected to play different roles in a simulated prison located within Stanford. This experiment was thought of and carried out by Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology. The boys, who were also students at Stanford, were randomly selected to be a guard or a prisoner. The prisoners were taken by real police officers to the Stanford jail. When the experiment started, most of the prisoners thought of the situation as it was intended to be, an experiment.

Read More

Summary Of Inside Lewisburg Prison

1318 Words | 6 Pages

It brings me much grief that I must be the bringer of terrible news, but then again it must be said and so I continue. Our fellow humans are being tortured and we have done nothing about it. I recently learned about a man named Sebastian Richardson. Richardson is 51 years old. Richardson is apparently one of many who are faced with horrendous abuse and brutal treatment brought upon him by the justice system.

Read More

Summary Of The Stanford Prison Experiment By Saul Mcleod

213 Words | 1 Pages

In the article “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Saul Mcleod it takes the reader through the process of an experiment by the University of Stanford were they got a group of people and split them up into to groups one group of people were guards and the other group of people were the prisoners, now in the experiment the guards were in charge of the prisoners, the prisoners relied on the guards for everything whether it be food or water or even a new set of clothes but as the experiment went on the guard abused their power making prisoners do miniscule task such as clean toilets with toothbrushes re make their beds after they had just been made and other thing, is is an example of the guards having to much power and they abused it at their

Read More

Compare And Contrast Stanford Prison Experiment And Philip Zimbardo

751 Words | 4 Pages

In summary, the purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to demonstrate that powerful situational forces, much like Abu Ghraib, could over-ride individual dispositions and choices, leading good people to do bad things simply because of the role they found themselves

Read More

Comparing A Few Good Men And The Perils Of Obedience

1546 Words | 7 Pages

In A Few Good Men, director Rob Reiner portrays the court case of two Marines named Dawson and Downey, on trial for the murder of another Marine, William Santiago. Santiago was killed due to a code red ordered by Kendrick and Jessep. Dawson and Downey felt that they are innocent because they were just following orders. The same situation arises in “The Perils of Obedience,” by Stanley Milgram. Milgram believes that everyone is inclined to be obedient but not hold responsibility, and proves this by including an experiment where while administering shocks to learners, teachers would only continue when being told to do so and when they were told that they are not responsible for what happens to the learner.

Read More

The Night Circus By Erin Morgenstern

450 Words | 2 Pages

He is a reminder that even the most powerful individuals are not immune to weakness, and that darkness and light can exist side by side in the same person. His ultimate fate is unknown, but there is a sense that his story is not yet

Read More

Compare And Contrast The Milgram Experiment And The Stanford Prison Experiment

810 Words | 4 Pages

This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.

Read More

Essay On Stanford Prison Experiment

599 Words | 3 Pages

They also concluded that the environment of the prison played a vital role in the way the guards treated the prisoners. It is believed that this experiment changed the way some U.S. prisons are

Read More

Essay Questions For Night By Elie Wiesel

669 Words | 3 Pages

What causes the prisoners to treat each other inhumanely? The prisoners of the concentration camps treated each other inhumanely because of the mental anguish and physical torture they endured while staying at the camps. Prisoners hurt each other because of starvation and anger. Also their families were separated and they were beaten by guards causing them to hurt each other.

Read More

The Importance Of Names In Toni Morrison's Beloved

1233 Words | 5 Pages

Names have always held power in literature; whether it is the defeated giant Polyphemus cursing Odysseus due to him pridefully announcing his name or how the true name of the Hebrew god was considered so potent that the word was forbidden. In fact, names were given power in tales dating all the way back to the 24th century B.C.E. when the goddess Isis became as strong as the sun god Ra after tricking him into revealing his true name. And in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, names have a much stronger cultural significance; and in the case of the character known as “Beloved”, her name is essentially her whole existence. Morrison shows the true power a name holds in African American literature through the character known as “Beloved”, as her role in the story becomes defined by the name she is given and changes in the final moments of the chapter.

Read More

Repressed Memories In Toni Morrison's Beloved

1334 Words | 6 Pages

1. Beloved, the novel by African-American writer Toni Morrison is a collection of memories of the characters presented in the novel. Most characters in the novel are living with repressed painful memories and hence they are not able to move ahead in their lives and are somewhere stuck. The novel, in a way, becomes a guide for people with painful memories because it is in a way providing solutions to get rid of those memories and move ahead in life. The novel is divided into three parts; each part becomes a step in the healing ritual of painful repressed memories.

Read More

The Stanford Prison Experiment: Unethical Or Not

746 Words | 3 Pages

Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

Read More

Stanford Prison Experiment Case Study

779 Words | 4 Pages

The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Journey Into Authoritarian Leadership Over the years, scientists, psychologists, and doctors have used social experiments to further their understanding of our surroundings. Social experiments are studies of the human mind and psyche through various environments. In this case, a social experiment called the Stanford Prison Experiment is what opened new doors for the comprehension of human behavior, how we act when we are in power, as well as offered a glimpse into the flaws in our legal system. This experiment was conducted in 1971 in Palo Alto, California.

Read More

A Hanging George Orwell Analysis

1771 Words | 8 Pages

George Orwell, who was born in India and was raised in Britain (99), wrote a powerful tale, “A Hanging,” which condemns capital punishment and its barbaric and heartless implementation. The story is based on the real life incident that he encountered while he was serving the British Imperial Police in Colonial Burma (Orwell 99). He witnessed a heartless action where an unnamed prisoner paid with his life for an unmentioned crime. The theme of the story is the wrongfulness of all the execution, and Orwell tries in “A Hanging” to highlight a specific case that exemplifies the reasons for eradication of the death penalty. Orwell works mainly through implication, and Orwell’s abolitionist message in “A Hanging” is conveyed through the prisoner, the dog, the functionaries, and their actions, words, and body language.

Read More

More about Is Annie's Identity In The Book Of The Dead By Edwidge Danticat

Related Topics

Open Document