ezydriver
03-22-2010, 04:18 PM
In my psychology class I have been asked to represent three psychological studies using a creative medium. I have chosen to illustrate Milgram's Obedience to Authority experiment by way of a short two chapter story. I've never attempted any sort of story before, only academic essays and the occasional fictitious email to friends. For those not familiar with Milgram's experiment it may be worthwhile to read a summary here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) so you can put my writing into context. I'm after some type of feedback because the two people I have shown it to liked it. Read on......
Chapter one
(1941)
“Shoot now” the inclement voice barked, and without hesitation it barked it once more “Shoot now”. January evenings chillingly embody all a spent bullet can ever embody, but none more so than the town of Radziłów. Sub zero celsius intrudes the core of any living being unfortunate enough to endure its bite and remains like a noxious shivery equivalent of herpes labialis. Craggy and jagged afflictions of granular sediment press into the knees of the condemned, piercing their rags and lacerating their kneecaps, filling them with dirt, filthy cold dirt. The ominous silhouette of undraped trees stark against the cloudless dusky sky, each a crest of haunted foreboding and twisted metal which this bloody war represents. A glacial landscape of iced top shacks, icy tracks and pallid swathes of brisk and harsh powder line the gullies which were once the epicentre of the locale. What was once a bustling peasant jaunt is now reduced to a malevolent cesspit of human depravity where death is a warm alternative to the inexorable sweeping winters of Poland. Here there is no birdsong, no mirth, no lillies and the few gaunt limping animals seem to emanate hopelessness through their woeful countenance. A scurry here and a yelp there are the only signs of animated activity which only the most parasitical of parasites would pursue in their foolhardy desperation to survive against cold odds. Every vision, scent and sound occurs in black and white except for the blue and red grimace of the scolded and wretched Jewish child about to be slain in cold blood. Cold. Everything here is cold.
“It’s a child sir, a harmless child” came the reply with a slight undercurrent of human compassion. “SHOOT NOW”, and on that frosty order came a piercing metallic crack familiar only to those who have been within the immediate vicinity of a firing pistol. One million things occur in the one millionth of a second it takes for the bullet to strike its target. Ten million cats blink, ten thousand hummingbirds will flap their wings once, one hundred thousand people will hit orgasm; one person will die and one will be born. The bullet remains austere in its trajectory, cold and inert like the commanding officer who decreed the shot. The culmination of ten million neurons galvanising each other, prompting an impulsive and automatic force on the trigger finger, like an unstoppable biological hydraulic powered by superficial hatred and ingrained fear, reside inside the bullet, giving it its required propulsion. As it spirals on its axis, the nano moment traverses the gulf between oppressed and oppressor and the karmic debt will terrorise the gunman and his superior with voodoo charm. The tapered shaft passes through the girl’s head like a hot knife through butter and remains firmly on its flight path before smashing into the grit and spewing up fresh snow upward like a bursting pimple. Blood streams out in oscillating spritzes and the pathetic carcass falls back without pause and becomes enveloped by the deep snow. Even the blood seems black and white, the snow and ice instantly freeze it into streams of putrid black bile.
The girl had a transcendent exotic beauty, an ethereal gaze, her eyes remained open and her black hair lined her snow coffin. Her eyes bore out from her crystallised charnel, framed by pure and virginal flakes of lace. She epitomised innocence, once humanised and humane and somebody’s daughter. A subtle lacrimosa shimmers in an aura of mournful heavenliness as the electricity fades from her smokey quartz eyes and her body temperature drops to that of the snow; she finally succumbs to death in its entirety. The soldier then stamped his size ten into her face and fired one more round through her brain to ensure she was dead.
Chapter two
(1946)
“How do you plea?”
“Not guilty”
“Wilhelm Keitel, you were Generalfeldmarschal of the oberkommando der wehrmacht. You were responsible for overseeing entire military operations. How on this earth can you plead not guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?” Keitel stood perpendicular, blazing an Aryan vanity. The recess in his stiff bottom lip, the nurtured side parting in his hair, the blond manicured clipped moustache, portly face and fixed stare all embodied the battle scarred yet proud and self righteous Third Reich. Where once divisions and regiments had marched in tiered unison, malignant and grey, it is now the sparse ranks of furniture laid out in stony rows which cast fate on the Nazi officials. Where once rows of decaying pipes spewed hydrogen cyanide to stripped and paltry Jews cattle herded into grey green rooms with concrete floors, it is now rows of sober pews delivering judicial monoxide to chancellors in chestnut courtrooms, with concrete evidence. Where Auschwitz foretold the destiny of one million Jews, Nuremberg unfolds the demise of twenty two officers.
The experimenter of far right death, der Führer, and his tyrannical death machine have suffered catastrophic failure. The puppet master mastered his own fate and remained impune; his hands were not only washed but blow dried and moisturised too. Each and every command he declared was met with obedient relish by men sub ordinate in context but ruthless in conduct. One man piloted the Luftwaffe; one man sailed the Kriegsmarine; and one man rammed the tanks of the Heer over the flesh and bones of Englishmen. Germany was not a country, Germany was one man. The initial rung of torture was anti semetic rhetoric, venomous through the airwaves but ridiculed behind doors. Steady increments of severity swirled and rolled and the velocity hastened with an insidious pitch. Emotion and oration moved to humiliation and degradation which yielded to limitation and domination before becoming deportation and incarceration climaxing in assassination and annihilation. A chemical desire became an endeavour which dispatched an order and turned into murder. From desire to murder the whole transmission was the gears of obedience and so the hatred and fear grinded through dry cogs. It passed from Führer to Marshal, marshal to commander, commander to officer, officer to soldier, and from soldier to innocent, coming to rest on the skeletal relic of another bulldozed shell. A Kriegsflegel is slung, an idea one end, destruction at the other. Without the spiked ball, without the chain and in the absence of a wooden handle the blow would be soft and blame could be exclusive. The weightless impulse inside der Führer’s cranium finished inside a snow coffin that fateful day in Radziłów. An idea, an impulse, a vision, deep from the guts of a mind ignites the engine and each spark, each revolution and each cycle, six million in all, end up as exhaustive fumes in the motor of death. Each mortal is one six millionth of the tiny bolt of electric deep in his mind.
“Answer the question Keitel”
“I was just following orders, your honour”.
Chapter one
(1941)
“Shoot now” the inclement voice barked, and without hesitation it barked it once more “Shoot now”. January evenings chillingly embody all a spent bullet can ever embody, but none more so than the town of Radziłów. Sub zero celsius intrudes the core of any living being unfortunate enough to endure its bite and remains like a noxious shivery equivalent of herpes labialis. Craggy and jagged afflictions of granular sediment press into the knees of the condemned, piercing their rags and lacerating their kneecaps, filling them with dirt, filthy cold dirt. The ominous silhouette of undraped trees stark against the cloudless dusky sky, each a crest of haunted foreboding and twisted metal which this bloody war represents. A glacial landscape of iced top shacks, icy tracks and pallid swathes of brisk and harsh powder line the gullies which were once the epicentre of the locale. What was once a bustling peasant jaunt is now reduced to a malevolent cesspit of human depravity where death is a warm alternative to the inexorable sweeping winters of Poland. Here there is no birdsong, no mirth, no lillies and the few gaunt limping animals seem to emanate hopelessness through their woeful countenance. A scurry here and a yelp there are the only signs of animated activity which only the most parasitical of parasites would pursue in their foolhardy desperation to survive against cold odds. Every vision, scent and sound occurs in black and white except for the blue and red grimace of the scolded and wretched Jewish child about to be slain in cold blood. Cold. Everything here is cold.
“It’s a child sir, a harmless child” came the reply with a slight undercurrent of human compassion. “SHOOT NOW”, and on that frosty order came a piercing metallic crack familiar only to those who have been within the immediate vicinity of a firing pistol. One million things occur in the one millionth of a second it takes for the bullet to strike its target. Ten million cats blink, ten thousand hummingbirds will flap their wings once, one hundred thousand people will hit orgasm; one person will die and one will be born. The bullet remains austere in its trajectory, cold and inert like the commanding officer who decreed the shot. The culmination of ten million neurons galvanising each other, prompting an impulsive and automatic force on the trigger finger, like an unstoppable biological hydraulic powered by superficial hatred and ingrained fear, reside inside the bullet, giving it its required propulsion. As it spirals on its axis, the nano moment traverses the gulf between oppressed and oppressor and the karmic debt will terrorise the gunman and his superior with voodoo charm. The tapered shaft passes through the girl’s head like a hot knife through butter and remains firmly on its flight path before smashing into the grit and spewing up fresh snow upward like a bursting pimple. Blood streams out in oscillating spritzes and the pathetic carcass falls back without pause and becomes enveloped by the deep snow. Even the blood seems black and white, the snow and ice instantly freeze it into streams of putrid black bile.
The girl had a transcendent exotic beauty, an ethereal gaze, her eyes remained open and her black hair lined her snow coffin. Her eyes bore out from her crystallised charnel, framed by pure and virginal flakes of lace. She epitomised innocence, once humanised and humane and somebody’s daughter. A subtle lacrimosa shimmers in an aura of mournful heavenliness as the electricity fades from her smokey quartz eyes and her body temperature drops to that of the snow; she finally succumbs to death in its entirety. The soldier then stamped his size ten into her face and fired one more round through her brain to ensure she was dead.
Chapter two
(1946)
“How do you plea?”
“Not guilty”
“Wilhelm Keitel, you were Generalfeldmarschal of the oberkommando der wehrmacht. You were responsible for overseeing entire military operations. How on this earth can you plead not guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?” Keitel stood perpendicular, blazing an Aryan vanity. The recess in his stiff bottom lip, the nurtured side parting in his hair, the blond manicured clipped moustache, portly face and fixed stare all embodied the battle scarred yet proud and self righteous Third Reich. Where once divisions and regiments had marched in tiered unison, malignant and grey, it is now the sparse ranks of furniture laid out in stony rows which cast fate on the Nazi officials. Where once rows of decaying pipes spewed hydrogen cyanide to stripped and paltry Jews cattle herded into grey green rooms with concrete floors, it is now rows of sober pews delivering judicial monoxide to chancellors in chestnut courtrooms, with concrete evidence. Where Auschwitz foretold the destiny of one million Jews, Nuremberg unfolds the demise of twenty two officers.
The experimenter of far right death, der Führer, and his tyrannical death machine have suffered catastrophic failure. The puppet master mastered his own fate and remained impune; his hands were not only washed but blow dried and moisturised too. Each and every command he declared was met with obedient relish by men sub ordinate in context but ruthless in conduct. One man piloted the Luftwaffe; one man sailed the Kriegsmarine; and one man rammed the tanks of the Heer over the flesh and bones of Englishmen. Germany was not a country, Germany was one man. The initial rung of torture was anti semetic rhetoric, venomous through the airwaves but ridiculed behind doors. Steady increments of severity swirled and rolled and the velocity hastened with an insidious pitch. Emotion and oration moved to humiliation and degradation which yielded to limitation and domination before becoming deportation and incarceration climaxing in assassination and annihilation. A chemical desire became an endeavour which dispatched an order and turned into murder. From desire to murder the whole transmission was the gears of obedience and so the hatred and fear grinded through dry cogs. It passed from Führer to Marshal, marshal to commander, commander to officer, officer to soldier, and from soldier to innocent, coming to rest on the skeletal relic of another bulldozed shell. A Kriegsflegel is slung, an idea one end, destruction at the other. Without the spiked ball, without the chain and in the absence of a wooden handle the blow would be soft and blame could be exclusive. The weightless impulse inside der Führer’s cranium finished inside a snow coffin that fateful day in Radziłów. An idea, an impulse, a vision, deep from the guts of a mind ignites the engine and each spark, each revolution and each cycle, six million in all, end up as exhaustive fumes in the motor of death. Each mortal is one six millionth of the tiny bolt of electric deep in his mind.
“Answer the question Keitel”
“I was just following orders, your honour”.