Paul Dimitrey

Professor Risano

English Composition 101

An Immoral Society

Calamities in modern society stem from the inability of people to assume responsibility.

Stanley Milgram’s essay, “The Perils of Obedience” consists of experiments that determine

people’s obedience among authority. The experiment uses one who shocks people as a result of

the victim answering wrong questions. Milgram assembles volunteers into two categories in the

experiment. One volunteer is a teacher, one who does the shocking, and the other is learner,

one who is being shocked for answering wrong questions. As a result of the experiments

Milgram states that “the person who assumes responsibility has evaporated,” and believes “this is

the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society (Milgram

776).Gansberg’s essay “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” recalls the murder

of Catherine Genovese who was stabbed to death. The disturbing fact of this essay is that thirty-

eight law-abiding citizens witnessed her death without calling the police. Martin Luther King’s

“Letter From a Birmingham Jail” is argued against pastors and clergy-men who believe that King

is breaking rules in society. Gansberg’s and King’s essays support Milgram’s theory by

exhibiting people who ignore their moral duties and responsibilities in situations where they ar

needed. The lack of responsibility in modern society results from the emerging divisions in

society that prevent any connection with others. This rejection of one’s responsibility is

portrayed in Gansberg’s and King’s essays as evil because it prevents subordinates, or people

without enough power, to have the same privileges as others in society.

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Gansberg's and King’s essays provide situations of people not acting in their society by

ignoring their responsibilities that support Milgram’s claim of the evaporation of responsibility in

a person. The death of Catherine Genovese in Gansberg’s report represents the lack of

responsibility people assume in society. She was attacked three different times in Kew Gardens

in the midst of 38 witnesses. These 38 witnesses should have assumed responsibility of the

situation by calling the police. However, they ignored the situation and took no action

whatsoever. What prevented the attacker from murdering her right away were the witnesses’

lights being turned on and their conversations:

Twice their chatter and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off.

Each time he returned, sought her out, and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during

the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead” (Gansberg 1)

This horrifying scene of the event displays the true nature of Milgram’s theory. What made the

attacker leave was the chatter of witnesses. However, this was only temporarily. The attacker

came back three times and finally stabbed her to death. The 38 witnesses did not take any sort of

action until after Genovese died. There was no responsibility because the witnesses were afraid

of resisting alone. If one or more witnesses took action and called the police, the rest of

neighborhood would have followed. In society people follow the majority. In Gansberg’s essay

there was no majority because no one came forth to assume responsibility. King, like Gansberg

and Milgram, mentions idle responsibility and action in his essay. He explains in his essay that

Mr. Conner and Mr. Boutwell are in the elections. King describes them as following a status quo

saying, “While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Connor, they are both

segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr.

Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to

desegregation” (King 744). This statement defines the absence of responsibility. During the Civil
Rights Movement, these dominant people such as Mr. Connor and Mr. Boutwell did not take

responsibilty because they needed to maintain a certain image. This supports Milgram’s idea that

when people resist the status quo, others will join their cause:

The rebellious action of others severely undermines authority. In one variation, three

teachers (two actors and a real subject) administered a test and shocks. When the two actors disobeyed the

experimenter and refused to go beyond a certain shock level, thirty-six of forty subjects joined their

disobedient peers and refused as well. (Milgram 775)

Gansberg’s an d King’s essays reflect upon Milgram’s statement. The witnesses were afraid of

resisting and did not call the police. King’s case is similar, he states that there is a certain status

quo that is maintain to preserve an image rather than seek justice. This portrayal of the lack of

action supports only supports Milgram’s theory. The different perspectives and outlooks of others

also determine their place in society for need.

People who are in different statuses and conditions have different perspectives of of each

other and therefore will not comprehend the full perspective view of their situations. Milgram

states that people don’t assume responsibility is because they do not view the perspective of

other people in a certain situation. One of the experiments that took place had the teacher

assume the role of directing the shock, not actually pulling down the lever. As a result, “thirty-

seven of forty adults continued to the highest level of the shock generator. Predictably, they

excused their behavior by saying that the responsibility belonged to the man who actually pulled

the switch” (Milgram 775). People will obey a command if they are not in the position of having

any responsibility of the situation. By not taking control of the lever, the teacher did not

assume direct responsibility towards the learner. Gansberg’s “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder

Didn’t Call the Police” is related to this in a similar manner. During the stabbing of Catherine
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Genovese in Kew Gardens, a witness viewed the situation but replaced the view with a different

perspective:

A housewife, knowingly if quite casually, said, ‘We thought it was a lovers’ quarrel.’ A husband and wife

both said, ‘Frankly, we were afraid.’ They seemed aware of the fact that events might have been different. A

distraught woman, wiping her hands in her apron, said, ‘I didn’t want my husband to get involved.’

(Gansberg 3)

Instead of viewing a stabbing, the housewife mistakenly viewed the situation as a lovers’

quarrel. This supports Milgram’s assertion that people’s responsibilities have evaporated in

society. The housewife did not want to assume responsibility for the situation because she did not

view the situation in the true perspective of Genovese. The perspective of the true nature of the

situation is of Genovese being stabbed to death. The housewife is identical to Milgram’s

teacher because they each look at their situations with a different perspective, not the

perspective of the victim. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” also presents readers with a

similar. Addressing the white clergy-men, King states that the perspective that pastors, clergy-

men, etc. had on African Americans aren’t correct:

I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies.

Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and

misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have

remained silent behind the anesthetizing scrutiny of stained-glass windows. (King 752)

King argues that they don’t view African Americans in the correct perspective. The way one

views a situation helps one understand the situation. If these pastors viewed African American’s

as equal humans and dismissed a social hierarchy in society, they would assume responsibility

and act. The absence of responsibility in this case is due to misunderstanding of others. Again,

King’s essay is a reflection of what Milgram states in his experiment. They both produce a result

that defines a condition of why responsibility has evaporated among people in society. Milgram
reaffirms his theory stating, “Beyond a certain point, the breaking up of a society into people

carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A

person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is this unable to act

without some kind of overall direction” (Milgram 776). Gansberg’s and King’s essays portray the

image of a lack of responsibility in society. People in the modern society do not pay attention or

give a second-look to what the true perspective is of a situation. This leads one to excuse

themselves from assuming a role in a society, or to take action. Because of an act going undone

in society, the result is an evil outcome of privileges being taken away from subordinate victims.

The absence of one’s responsibility results in preventing a victim’s privilege in society.

Preventing one’s privilege in society is the socially organized evil in modern society.

Gansberg’s and King’s essay illustrate this devastating effect on subordinates and helpless

people. Catherine Genovese in Gansberg’s essay was a subordinate who was rejected of her

privileges because the neighbors took no sort of action. The privilege that was take an away from

Genovese was her life. Another witness portrays the true image of a deformed human

characteristic by his response to the situation, “A man peeked out from a slight opening in the

doorway to his apartment and rattled off an account of the killer’s second attack,” Gansberg says,

“Why hadn’t he called the police at the time? ‘I was tired,’ he said without emotion. ‘I went back

to bed’ (Gansberg 3). The witness’s evil was not an act of preventing the death of Genovese. The

evil act was preventing her to have the same privileges as the witnesses, the ability to have a

chance second chance. With the witness refusing to act upon the situation, he refuses Genovese’s

chance to live. Martin Luther King demonstrates this idea well in his letter to the misguided

pastors. King provides a clear and strong argument of the law against what pastors believe

African-Americans are breaking. However, what he says has a different meeting the satisfies the
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purpose of defining one’s privilege. In society the law is just and unjust. King provides a

definition to an unjust law saying, “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All

segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.

It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority”

(King 746). The descriptions that King include here are words that describe evil. King supports

Milgram’s theory by these statements that makes. Segregation is followed by the evaporation

of responsibility. African American’s did not have any privileges to take part in society of

humans. They were living in a society where segregator has a sense of superiority and the

segregated a false sense of inferiority. Gansberg and King illustrate this loss of one’s

human status well to support Milgram’s theory.

The current modern society consists of people who are not aware of situations that

revolve around them. It is important to take action and responsibility in a society to maintain

stability. Genovese’s life could have been saved if any of the witnesses resisted the status quo.

Her privileges were taken away from her, and she no longer became an equal in her society. The

depth letter of King to the pastors observe the evils of the absence of responsibility. Both authors

firmly support Milgram’s theory of an evaporated responsibility.

Work Cited

Gansberg, Martin. "Thirty-Eight Saw Murder." Southeastern Louisiana University. Web.

07 Dec. 2010. <http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/gansberg.html>.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Copyright 1963 Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., copyright renewed 1991 Coretta Scott King.

Reprinted by arrangement of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., c/o

Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, NY.

Milgram, Stanley, “The Perils of Obedience,” abridged and adapted from

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram. Published in Harper’s

Magazine. Copyright 1974 by Stanley Milgram. Reprinted by

permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.