FASNY Headmaster Retires - Franco-American School of New York

6WorldJu n e 2012The Beast Lies WithinBy Maddie King“The Afternoon wore on, hazyand dreadfu(…; the sow staggered her wayahead of them, bleeding and mad, and thehunters followed, wedded to her in lust,excited by the long chase and the droppedblood.…. They were just behind her whenshe staggered into an open space where …butterflies danced round each other and theair was… still. Here, struck down by theheat, the sow fell and the hunters hurledthemselves at her.…Then Jack found thethroat and the hot blood sprouted over hishands. The sow collapsed under them. Atlast the immediacy of the kill subsided. Theboys drew back, and Jack stood, holdingout his hands.“Look”He giggled and flicked them whilethe boys laughed at his reeking palms.(…)Roger began to withdraw his spear (…).Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase thatwas received uproariously.“Right up her ass!”(…)This time Robert and Mauriceacted the two parts; and Maurice’s actingof the pig’s efforts to avoid the advancingspear was so funny that the boys cried withlaughter.(…) The butterflies still danced,preoccupied in the center of the clearing.”--Lord of the FliesFor a bunch of twelve-year-old kids, thebehavior shown in this passage fromLord of the Flies is not only unexpected,but frighteningly eerie. Set duringWorld War II, the book recounts thestrange evolution of a group of youngBritish boys after their plane crashesonto an uncharted island. While, in thebeginning, the boys, aged 6-12, continueto act with a “civilized” conscienceand sense of responsibility, they soonembrace a life of savagery.This conduct can be viewed intwo different ways: either as a mentalregression into a more primitive state,or the emergence of evil from the verydepth of the human nature.It could even be a correlationof both. The author’sautobiography suggests thatviolent tendencies as a teenagerwas one of the greatestelements that inspired himto write the book. The timeperiod is no coincidence either.In his memoir, WilliamGolding, the author,admits: “World War II wasthe turning point for me.I began to see what peoplewere capable of doing. Anyonewho moved throughthose years without understandingthat man producesevil as a bee produces honey must havebeen blind or wrong in the head.” Somesuggest that the book is actually an allegoryof the war: the boys start out asfriends, brothers, even, yet are dividedonce some are unwilling to submit tothose who are by that time insane withpower and barbarism.Many psychological tests weremade in the second half of the centuryconcerning this type of radical behaviorchange. In 1971, Philip Zimbardoconducted his famous Stanford prisonexperiment. The procedure’s goal wasto study the psychological reaction ofseventy-five perfectly normal men whengiven the role of either a prison guard ora prisoner.The results were shocking. Afteronly two days, the prison guards startedto psychologically and physically abusethe prisoners. Various forms of humiliationwere handed out as punishment forbad behavior while the obedient wererewarded with better cells, meals andsupplies. Six days in, the experimentshut down. The men’s reactions wereeven more extreme than Zimbardo hadpredicted: many of the guards seemed tohave developed true sadistic tendencies,and the prisoners were, of course, traumatized,and grew to internalize theirprisoner role as a result. One prisonereven had to be removed from the mockprison after 36 hours on account of violentcrying, bouts of anger and screaming.In the end, Zimbardo concludedthat the participants’ behaviors weremore due to the intense situation ratherthan their individual personalities. Heeven wrote a book entitled The LuciferEffect, which questions whether we canever be sure we are inherently good.Numerous critics challengedZimabardo’s verdict. Erich Fromm, notably,defended a different theory: thatviolent behavior such as this is unalterablydue to character traits. He arguedthat the experiment carried out by Zimbardowas incorrectly and unjustly executed,and even referenced the Naziconcentration camps to support hisviews.Also, in a more recent context,soldiers in enemy territory have beenknown to have had similar irrationallyviolent behaviors. Abhorrent picturesof the military posing in insulting positionswith Iraqi prisoners and corpseshave frequently been turning up in themedia. We have viewed these pictureswww.nobelprize.orgwith disgust and horror, and, uncomprehending,we have either assumedthat these people were the “bad apples”of the bunch or attributed their actionsto pure traumatic insanity.But can it be more than that?The truth is, a hostile environmentbrings out the worst in us. With a licenseto kill (or in the case of Lord of the Flies,a license to survive), people are capableof things they would not have fathomeddoing when they had ethically and sociallyimposed boundaries. In studyingLord of the Flies, we observe that theboys begin to lose it not when they startmurdering each other, but way beforethat: when they slaughter their first pig.Could this be the root of ourproblem? If, in your mind, you are ableto kill, then you are able to harm. If youare able to harm, you are able to torture.And once you are able to torture, thenthere is very little separating you fromutter sadism. Now say you were in aposition in which you were personallyhanded a gun and told you had to killthe people in front of you if you andyour people wanted to survive. Whatwould happen then? Would you releasethe beast within?The French-American School Of New YorkMessengerGood luck to Debbie in her new post in the Fenimore office! We will miss you! Visit us often!Editors-in-Chief: Emanuelle Rizk, Julian SalzManaging Editors: Armand Latreille, Olivier WeissVOL. IX NO. VMiddle School Editor: Margaux Salz Sports Editor: Paul Castaybert Design Editor: Clémence Wassen Copy Editor: Emma GuyotDrawings by Louis LeJamtel and Emanuel Wickenburg.Reporting Staff: Michael Anderson, Victor Counillon, Joaquin Delmar, Jurnivah Désir, Thomas De Villemejane,Amelia Getahun-Hawkins, Nicolas Granato, David Guyot, Zoé Guyot, Guillaume Horikawa, Emilie Kehm,Maddie King, Cedric Nakashima, Sophia Nee, Yuri Nessen, Elizabeth O’csay, Mathieu Rizk,Oumou Sarr, Jacqueline Sarro, Emanuel Wickenburg, Camile Williams, Irène Woo.Ecole Franco-Américaine de New YorkFrench-American School of New YorkFaculty Advisors: Mrs. Anne K. Culhane, Mr. Tom FaureSpecial thanks to Ms. Creteur, Mr. Guyot, Ms. Lopez, and Mr. Taylor145 New Street, Mamaroneck, NY 10543(914) 250-0000 www.fasny.org