Blindly obeying authority often results In disobedience to one’s personal morality. Since rules were established and exist for the common interests of the general population, some would say adhering to the rules is obedient. Contrary to popular belief, disobedience does not center around ignorant rebellion. In fact disobedience is the manner which people shed enlightenment on the well-traveled trail of benightedness, by offering another point of view. In “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson, a fictional town is introduced in which all the villagers participate annually in a lottery used to determine which inhabitant is to be stoned to death; performed out of habit, it demonstrates ritualized unthinking obedience to custom. Moreover, in “Group Minds”, Dorris Lessing asserts that a lack of awareness of the extent to which groups mitigate a person’s individuality makes that person susceptible to the pressures of groups. Using the threat of world total destruction as a backdrop, Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” distinguishes between disobedience that is destructive and disobedience that is life affirming. Lessing and Fromm have different analysis of obedience when it comes to the stonin
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It is significant that she has just come from washing her dishes which is one of the most basic jobs of housework. Wiping her hands on her apron and apologizing for being late by saying, “ Wouldn’t have me leave m’dishes in the sink, now would you. Fromm’s position would suggest that disobedience is necessary for the society of the village in “The Lottery” to progress and grow; unless they are able to break away from unthinking obedience to what he calls “authoritarian conscience”(379). Moreover, Dorris Lessing would assert that Bobby did obey his father because he belongs to a major and essential group which is his family where his father stand as the highest authority and the leader. We first meet Tessie Hutchinson when she arrives to the lottery. Fromm best explains the humanistic conscience when he says:…the humanistic conscience;this is the voice present in every human being…and is based on the fact that as human beings we have an intuitive knowledge of what is conductive of life and what is destructive. Therefore, he was the major authority in the house. We see that even as Tessie is being stoned to death she does not question the reasoning behind the lottery,but why it should be her that has to die. Therefore,he has to ‘obey the atmosphere”. He noted that human history began in an act of disobedience, that of Adam and Eve’s “original sin”(378), which set man free to develop and grow. Therefore, as Erich Fromm and Dorris Lessing explain, one should distinguish between disparaging and constructive obedience, and should discern to what extent they get implicated within a group. Lessing argues that a human is a social animal and with that, comes social pressures and authoritative figures. (384) This shows that the son could not defy his father’s command as he did to his mother’s. In Jackson’s Lottery, the social strains are evident in the apparently innocent banter covering the tension of the villagers as they gather on the green to await the drawing of the lottery tickets.
Approximate Word count =
912
Approximate Pages =
4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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