Stanley Milgram - the Perils of Obedience

In this article, Milgram presents his theory of obedience. He wanted to understand a new aspect of human nature that wasn’t explored before. He provided examples from his experiment to support his findings. His experiment was set up to determine how people would react to an authority?

Milgram is surely an intelligent writer, he is aware of his audience. This article was written for every common man who believes that he is good and cannot do anything bad to anyone else. The paragraphs and examples cited follow a logical order and there is a purpose behind the placement of each example. The first example of a German Ð"©migrÐ"©Ð²Ð‚™s refusal to continue the electrical shocks is clearly cited to satisfy people who predicted that most of the subjects would not obey. It is very obvious that she should have obeyed, but Milgram surprises us when we read that she refuses to obey.

The author has given a dramatic description of his subject’s reactions. He re-creates the tension of the experiment by citing the whole conversation step by step. In some examples he has really succeeded in heightening the drama. The whole introduction of Fred Prozi and the description of his physical appearance are to portray him as a very normal next door guy. But his dramatic reactions are revealed later.

This article was such an eye opener for me. Before reading the article I predicted that most of the subjects would refuse to obey, but it wronged me. It was quite interesting to read the findings of the experiment. Though I don’t agree that the results will be same in the real world. The whole article from start to end was quite intense. I couldn’t sense any gap or time transitions. The title worked perfectly with the idea.