In Friday's discussion, we talked about the power that others hold over us. When Assef raped Hassan, his two friends (who disapproved of the act) just stood by and watched. We talked about different studies where, when given a position of power, people will do crazy things to others. Mr. Allen brought up the Stanford Prison Experiment, which I had never heard of before. But when he started explaining it, I realized I had heard of it before. In an episode of Veronica Mars, My Big Fat Greek Rush Week, her boyfriend Logan and best friend Wallace are allowed an opportunity to get out of a 20-page essay for their psych class. Anyone who volunteers for a study and is on the winning team is exempt from it, and the losers only have to write a 10-page essay.
If you watch from 2:10-4:06, you see what happened in the show. The video clip doesn't show it, but in the end of the episode, they show the prisoner who gave away the fake address taking notes for the guard who was especially abusive towards him (Shawn from Boy Meets World), and saying that he's a "pretty good guy." Human nature is such an absurdly complicated topic, and I can't even begin to scratch the surface in one blog post, but I thought that it is such an important topic in Kite Runner that it deserved to be addressed. People's willingness to do wonders when given a position of power (like the experiment Mr. Williams talked about) is amazing, and makes you wonder what you would do when power-crazy. Most people would like to say they would hold true to their morals, but the question I leave you with is: Would you?
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