Part One. What is the dehumanization process that encourages those in power (teachers, the Vigils) to become more cruel and ruthless in their imposition of power against their subjects (students)?
One. Strip a man of all his belongings, including clothes is powerful symbolically because his complete nakedness represents complete helplessness and powerlessness to both himself and the Vigils. In prison, they guards strip the prisoners of their clothes. While not as extreme, the Vigils do take the students to their hideout where the students are rendered helpless and in a way are “naked.”
Two. Establish the prisoners’ as reprobates and miscreants, rejects of society who are incapable of obeying the social contract without the intervention of the prison system. The Vigils will humiliate the students, explaining that they are losers who can only redeem themselves by fulfilling the Assignments.
Three. Impose strict rules, which must be rigidly enforced to keep a sharp dividing line between the powerful and the powerless: There are rituals of “respect” that must be maintained lest the students suffer the Vigils’ wrath.
Four. The dehumanization can only occur in mutual interdependence: a cruel symbiosis between Vigils and students. This symbiosis is also evident between teachers and students when Brother Leon plays a humiliation game on Bailey (“Why do you cheat?”) and when the students go along with it, Leon says the whole class, a bunch of passive cowards, turned into Nazi Germany.
Five. Establish anonymity to “minimize each prisoner’s sense of uniqueness and prior identity.” The students mean nothing in the face of the Vigils’ power.
Six. Strip the men of their masculinity by restraining their movement through modified clothing that makes them move in a “feminine” manner. They’re wearing smocks that look like dresses. The Vigils’ strip the students of their masculinity by the Assignments, which are a reminder of who has all the power and who must be obedient.
Seven. Reinforce the prisoners’ sense of infantile helplessness by making them ask permission for the most rudimentary activities. Jerry will be punished for defying the Vigils. He can only refuse the chocolates under the Vigils’ order, but not on his own.
Eight. Treat the prisoners more like animals than humans. The Vigils make the students perform tedious acts that remind the students that they are insignificant, less human and more animal.
Nine. Reinforce the prisoners’ helplessness by taking away their sense of time. We can’t say the Vigils have this much power.
Ten. Reinforce power by assigning arbitrary, meaningless tasks and gratuitous acts of humiliation. Look again to the Assignment in which a screwdriver is used to unscrew everything in one of the teachers’ rooms. The Goober does it without question, but then is overcome with guilt for the effect it has on the teacher who has a nervous breakdown.
Eleven. Establish the Principle of Learned Helplessness. Here we arrive at a terrifying insight of human psychology: The more helpless people become, the less sympathetic they become. To the contrary, they become more and more contemptible.
Part Two. In many ways the power the Vigils have over the students parallels the Stanford Experiment. What lessons were learned from the experiment?
One. Normal people can be radically transformed into instruments of evil under specific “institutional pressures” which pit an authority figure against a subservient.
Two. An abusive environment can create psychotic and sadistic behavior associated with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Look what happens to Goober and perhaps Jerry.
Three. The mock prison environment is a metaphor for the abuse of power that can take place in a marriage, school, a job, and so on. An abusive spouse, teacher, administration, boss, co-workers, and so on can all create conditions analogous, perhaps to a lesser degree, to the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Part Three. How is this dehumanization replicated at Trinity High? See above.
Three. 10 Signs of Tribalism Established by the Vigils
1. learn to create fear and intimidation to create power.
2. Learn to make the rules for popularity
3. Decide who will be the necessary pariahs; scapegoat an innocent victim to make your subjects prove their loyalty.
4. Develop an us vs. them mentality
5. Create a strict social hierarchy that must be followed
6. Master the art of humiliation and mockery.
7. Exercise social Darwinism in which the strong get stronger while the weak are despised.
8. Provincial: tied to your locale; suspicious of outsiders, strangers.
9. Resistant to change and new ideas. In other words, there is a high premium on ignorance.
10. Code of silence whereby you never rat on a high member of the tribe even if his or her behavior is morally bankrupts or has inflicted death or injury on an innocent victim.
11. Tribalism provides the three conditions for torture or inflicting violence against others: authority, routine, dehumanization or demonization.
Four. Analyze the sadistic dynamics between “captors and captives” in Chapters 5 and 6 with the Stanford Experiment. Consider the process of dehumanization.
1. Goober is less human and more like “Vigil bait.”
2. Archie prides himself on being able to “build a house next door,” come up with a quick solution for the Vigils, but he can’t find a solution to his own misery, his own personal sense that he’s lacking in humanity. He also feels a sense of “self-disgust,” especially when he’s performing an Assignment, interrogating a student.
3. The interrogating takes place in a windowless room with guards and a bare light bulb. It’s essentially a prison cell.
4. “Tell me why you’re here.” What does this establish? Who’s in charge, who’s got the power. Obedience.
5. Archie tells Goober the Assignment isn’t personal, which shows the depersonalization or dehumanization of the subject performing the Assignment.
6. The Goober passively accepts the Assignment. It is “doom,” something inescapable, no student has been able to fight against it.
7. In Chapter 6, Brother Leon takes delight in humiliating Bailey, one of his best students, by accusing him of being a cheater. The scene underscores the powerful and the powerless.
Part Five. One Way of Approaching the Essay Assignment (If I Were Writing It)
In my first page, I would write about a time I compromised my humanity by conforming to some unwritten law, like the time I fought Ron Reynolds because he had said something in PE that had insulted me. I wasn’t really mad, but punched him to “defend my honor,” then felt guilty afterwards.
In my second page, I’d argue that The Chocolate War is about the dehumanization that occurs from power, conformity, and blind obedience. In my body paragraphs I’d show how Jerry, Goober, Brother Leon, and Archie compromised their humanity through blind obedience and the worship of power. In the process, I’d compare these characters to the awful truths learned in the Milgram and Stanford Experiments.
Part Six. Journal Entry
Write about a personal experience you had where the abuse of power resulted in the loss of someone’s humanity. You could write about a bully, a cruel teacher who humiliates students, or some authority figure. Or you could write about how you exercised power in a way that you made feel regretful and guilty afterwards. You could use this anecdote for the first page of your essay.
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