The analysis involves reviewing and comparing material from the article “Behavioral Study of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram and “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families” by Philip Gourevitch. In 1963, a professor at Yale University, Stanley Milgram, experiments, the purpose of which is to study the human nature of obedience, the willingness to follow a leader while violating generally accepted principles and rules. A documentary book by the American journalist Philip Gourevitch published in 1994 tells about the genocide in Rwanda. Gourevitch examines the causes, course, and consequences of the catastrophe and puts forward serious accusations against Europe and America. The works represent large-scale researches since the analyzed information and results will be valid for centuries until people move away from violence and obedience as from global phenomena.
The results of Milgram’s experiment showed that people are unable to resist authority. The thesis of the experiment described in the article can be formulated as follows: a person can go far enough, causing pain to another, even if obedience to the leader is contradictory for him. The experimenter’s initial arguments were related to the German population; it seemed to him that the Germans were inclined to obey the orders of people who were authoritative for them. Milgram wanted to understand by experience why in WWII, the inhabitants of Germany were so cruel to the prisoners of concentration camps (Milgram, 1963). The experiment’s final results proved that regardless of nationality, the participants deliberately inflicted pain on other people if their superiors required this. In addition, the stunning results of the experiment became a visual confirmation of the central thesis. Of the 40 people, 26 increased the tension to the maximum level (Milgram, 1963). None of the 40 participants tried to complete the experiments at the first request of the “student” to release him.
Having gone to Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch recorded dozens of interviews with victims, executioners, politicians, foreign witnesses, delve into history, add personal impressions, and explain why this genocide is essential to everyone. The author claims that the Rwandans committed the genocide, but this is only part of the truth (Gourevitch, 2008). Until the 19th century, Hutu and Tutsis lived together, had one common language and one religion. Then the Europeans came and pitted the peoples against each other for several decades, which led to dire consequences. The thesis of the work may be that the bloody events of genocide, the extermination of one people by another, were facilitated by several factors, inciting enmity between neighbors.
Arguing the thesis, the author says that interference in the country’s politics, economic recession, and independent media calling for the extermination of “cockroaches,” preparing massacres for years, all this led to genocide. In an interview, the fleeing Hutu functionaries constantly spoke not about genocide but about chaos (Gourevitch, 2008). When there is chaos, anything happens, but Gourevitch claims that there was no chaos, the genocide took place in an organized manner, hatred forced to kill. Notifications about murders were “announced on the radio, it was in the newspapers, people spoke of it openly.” (Gourevitch, 2008, p. 27) The conclusions of Gourevitch are much more terrible than all descriptions of death: by the time the genocide began, both murderers and victims were mentally prepared – the first to kill, the second to die.
Milgram set out to understand the essence of the ruthless attitude of the Nazis to the prisoners of concentration camps during the Holocaust, which, in his opinion, was based on obedience to an authority figure. In the book, Gourevitch also explores the causes of genocide, massacres of an entire people, abuse, and rape. Only now, the author of the book says that obedience is not the main factor forcing the extermination of their kind; it is a number of factors that led to the catastrophe. Conformity is a similar argument found in the writings of the authors. A certain pressure that a person cannot withstand due to various reasons, depending on different circumstances. The phenomenon is observed in the Milgram experiment from the fact that the test subjects are under pressure from an authority figure, breaking and pressing down; this forces them to overstep morality. The book describes that “this person who is not a killer is made to do it, and the next day it’s become a game for him. One doesn’t need to keep pushing him.” Gourevitch also focuses on conformism, situations when a person does not want to kill but is forced because of the pressure of others.
To conclude, the works are entirely different in terms of writing but have similarities related to the topics studied. Milgram, in his experiment, studies the phenomenon of obedience and presents information in the form of an article; the format of Gurevich’s study presents a mixture of genres and eras that makes his work prominent. For the analysis, it is essential to note that Milgram acts as an agent and pushes people to actions recognized as unethical, which are necessary for the experiment. Gourevitch investigates what has already happened, observing from the outside; he is interested in theories of collective insanity and hates fevers, which forced people to commit mass crimes. A significant difference is that the experiment is an artificially created environment, although the methods used to prove the assumptions were considered unethical and caused moral harm to the test subjects. The book describes a study carried out after the bloody events and genocide of the people in real life, the damage from which is much more significant – thousands of victims and deep-rooted fear.
References
Gourevitch, P. (2008). We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda. Paw Prints.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of abnormal and social psychology, 67(4), 371.