How The Ideas Of The "banality Of Evil" And "gray Zones" Challenge The Hero/villain Essay - 1,152 words

How the ideas of the "banality of evil" and "gray zones" challenge the hero/villain model. Throughout the history, evildoers were thought to have a certain abnormal psychological traits that were enabling them to defy morals, in order to reach their objectives. Those who perpetrated crimes against humanity were considered to have their evilness attributed to them at all times. Thus, the popular concept of heroes opposed to villains is being formed and it dominated peoples perception in how they assessed reality, right to the end of Second World War. After horrendous crimes, perpetrated by Nazis against Jews and other nations, were being discovered, many people were shocked by the fact that those responsible for implementation of genocidal policies, appeared to be not a monsters but a regular individuals, without any pathological inclinations. Slowly, people began to realize that embodied evil doesnt necessarily have to appear charismatic in any respect the horror lies in the fact that it can be very banal. In Hanna Arendts book Eichman in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil, she tells us a story of Adolph Eichmans trial in Jerusalem in 1961, after he was being kidnapped by the Israeli secret agents in Argentina. During the Second World War, SS Sturmbanfuhrer Eichman was responsible to transportation of Jews to the extermination camps in Poland.


It is alleged that there 5 million of Jews are being transported to their deaths, while he was in charge. Although many modern historians discharge this number as being overly exaggerated, still there is no doubt that great many Jews were killed after being evacuated under Eichmans supervision. Little scrawny man, insignificant and pitiful thats how Hanna describes Eichman. It appears that he was just a burocrat, preoccupied with making career. He never hated Jews and those who had known him, described former Sturmbanfuhrer as perfect father to his children and great animal lover. All this just doesnt fit into image of monster, responsible for the deaths of millions. Levi Primo in his The Gray Zone asserts that while being kept in camp during the war, he realized that it was getting harder and harder for him to draw line between black and white.


He tells us of a gray zone, which defined his existence there, where definitions of right and wrong are being mixed to such degree that it was getting to be impossible to distinguish one from another. The paradox here lies in the fact that evil often had an attributes of good and vice versa: It is a gray zone, poorly defined, where the two camps of masters and slaves both diverge and converge.... The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness ... to collaborate. We live in time when classical definitions cannot be applied to describe the essence of the subjects that we used to associate them with. For example, it is much more appropriate to discuss politics with the means of economical terminology now these days. In its turn, economy is best described with the help of criminal slang The definitions have been shifted since the advent of modern era and thats why classical ways, of how we percept good and evil, cannot guarantee any degree of objectivity.


Another book that needs to be mentioned here to illustrate this thesis is Alexander Hintons Why Did You Kill?. In it, he tries to analyze the psychology ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: new york, second world, zone, gray, jews

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