Green Light

The first third of the book A Problem From Hell looks specifically into three genocides that happened in the twentieth century.  The first genocide took place in Turkey.  In Turkey, thousands of Armenians were slain by order of Turkish leaders after refusal to convert religions from Christianity to Islam.  Barely anyone did anything to contest the killings of the Armenians, and nothing was initially done to stop it.  After World War I ended in 1918, the killings stopped.  However, America’s lack of response was taken into account by many people.  The next chapter talks of the view of a man by the name of Raphael Lemkin, a young Jewish man who had many ideas on the genocide in Turkey and genocides in general.  A famous qoute from his ideas says, “If it happened once, it would happen again.”  (19).  Lemkin was completely right in this sense, because a short number of years later, as Hitler rose to power, another genocide was started.  The Holocaust is the most widedly known genocide in the history of mankind.  Over twelve million people were killed, six million of which were jews.  The jews became the scapegoat for Germany’s loss in Worl War I and the depression in the country after the war.  This then led to World War II and Germany was defeated.  The third genocide in this part of the book was in Cambodia.  After a very bloody civil war, the communist rebels, known as the Khmer Rouge, came into power.  Under the Khmer Rouge, millions of Cambodians were slaughtered and tortured solely as a method of obedience and control.  The genocide was put to rest in 1975 after the Americans became involved.

There are many similarities between these three genocides.  The Armenian genocide and the Holocaust both had to do with the religion of those being killed and how the government leaders were against these religions.  Both of these governments had no restraints in the killings and that is why they were so terrible.  A similarity between the Holocaust and the Cambodian genocide is that in both cases, killing of innocent civilians was used as a method of control for people.  If anyone stepped out of line, then they would be killed too.

At first, my group read through the scenes together and then we decided upon who each person will play.  This was done easily and there were no disputes during this part.  Then we split the group in two and worked on the two scenes separately.  I was working on Act V Scene II with Ali Ro., Joe, and Lauren.  We discussed our costumes and the set, as well as working on blocking the movements during our scenes and memorizing our lines.  The group works extremely well together and everyone gets their points of view in without being put down.  Yesterday, we divided up the jobs for the prompt book and are beginning to work on them. 

For my independant reading assignment, I will be reading A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power.  The book discusses genocide in the last century and reflects on the failing promises of world leaders to stop it.  When we were first asked to bring in a visual representation of evil, many people brought in pictures of Hitler or other representations of the Holocaust.  Of course, the Holocaust has a section devoted to it in this book.  However, as I read through the table of contents, I noticed that the Holocaust was one of only a couple of genocides that I recognized.  It should be interesting to see whether or not most of these examples of genocide are similar to each other.  With only previous knowledge of the Holocaust and a few other examples of genocide from social studies courses, I hope to gain a larger understanding of the “evil” behind genocide by reading this book. 

The question posed at the end of class today was whether or not evil could be used as a way to describe or diagnose a person.  While a person’s actions can be looked upon as evil, the person themselves may be a kind person in other situations.  For example, some murderers committed vicious crimes, yet people who knew and loved them before could not ever believe that they did such a thing.  If they are normal people, then a turning point must have occurred for them to commit such a horrible act.  But what if there was no obivious turning point?  Could we then assume that a person has just become evil?  However, evil is most likely just a safe term for people.  If an event is so horrid, that no one can explain what caused it, then they would turn to the supernatural.  Humans never like to be unsureof things, because it scares them.  So, maybe it was a sudden change of the mind, a terrible life, or maybe it really was the supernatural that caused this evil to happen.  But only the person who committed the evil could tell us for sure.  But if people are so afraid of evil, then why would they ever listen to this “evil” person?  This just goes to show that we must come to terms with evil before we can ever truly get a grasp of its true meaning. 

Bringing harm unto others is looked upon as evil by most people, but what if it’s someone’s job to do this?  The modern tobacco industry knows just how deadly their product is, yet continue to sell it for the imense amount of money it brings them.  Cigarettes not only harm people, but they are extremely addictive.  When someone becomes addicted, it makes it much harder for them to escape the harm they are bringing upon themselves.  So why won’t anyone stop it?

The answer to this is money.  People knowingly harm others just for profit.  Money has corrupted the way of the world so that almost everyone partakes in an act of evil.  Its ironic that the president can criticize terrorists and dictators as being evil, yet millions of dollars that were spent on his campaign where donated by the tobacco idustry.  If even the government uses money obtained by evil ways, then what boundaries are they setting for the rest of us?

Today in class, someone  mentioned that people must sometimes do “evil things” to survive.  In a way, I agree with this statement.  The idea of evil is used as a boundary in a peaceful society in order to keep people in line.  However, in a society that lacks peace, are doing things that are considered evil the only way to survive?  One example I can think of that pertains to this situation is the condition of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.  Before the hurricane, New Orleans was like most common cities, with the laws and peace kept.  But after the hurricane, the city was a wreck and people with no place to go were stuck in the city.  Just to stay alive, they had to pilfer food from stores and other people.  Some also committed more heinous crimes such as murder in order to get food and fresh water.  Although there were other means of survival, such as help from the government and getting out of the city, most of the people there had no such way of escaping.  The smaller “evils” such as stealing could easily be forgiven and looked upon as a survival method, but the larger ones such as murder should be deemed unacceptable at all times.  The way that someone is raised and taught about evil is what really determines how they would act in a situation like this.  And although there are some that say there is no medium between good and evil, I believe that the situation you are placed in is what really determines the confines if evil.