Post #5 The connection between Milgram's experiment and The Book Of Negroes

The purpose of Milgram's experiment was to learn why did the Nazi Germany blamed all the faults and tortured Jews under simple orders without thinking about these orders and how much can personal conscience change or make accomplices think that these orders were inhuman. They were two groups of people involved in the experiment.  One group of people was going to play the role of teachers and the other group of people was playing the role of students and they were separates in two rooms. They can talk by the window. Teachers were told to punish students once the students could not memory the right answers by electric shock. They would increase the voltage of the shock when students answer more questions wrong. When the voltage got increased high enough, the students would make the sound that representing shout or cry to express the pain. The sounds were recorded before. When the teacher found it was dehumanization and wanted to stop the test. He had to insist it three times until the professor in the room agreed it.

The result of the experiment was cruel. It shows that only few of people would stop hurting others and most of people would listen to authority without thinking. This connected to the book of Negroes. The majority of people in that society prejudiced and afflicted the black instead of thinking that the black are human beings as well. They did not have the proper reasons for racism. They judged the black because they were black. They just followed herd mentality and none came out and pointed out that the black was not born for slave or the black and the white were equal. The weakness of the human beings was shown. In some ways, the white were spiritual slaves as well. They fellow the authority's orders to torture and bleed the black. They were like the teachers in the experiment and most of them did not realize how bad was that. The experiment and the book of the Negroes both express that most of people would dehumanize someone if they were under orders. They would take the orders directly instead of thinking whether it right or not. They would feel reasonable to hurt or kill others. They became killing machines, which were cold and would not be awaked by personal conscience.

Post #4 "And my story waits like a restful beast"

In Thursday's class, we discussed the chapter one of the book two named "And my story waits like a restful beast". This story happened in London in the year of 2013. She was about 60 years old. She sat with the abolitionists who called Aminata their equal.  The abolitionists are a group of English men who want to end African slave trade and sent slaves free. Aminata wanted to tell her story to them. But they just want to listen something offensive about slave ship. Aminata was tired of that. She thought the meaning of her life is to tell the story, according to the last sentence in this chapter, “One of these people will find my story and pass it along, and then, I believe, I will lived for a reason"(Lawrence 118).  She was unsatisfied with abolitionists' neglect about her story. "The abolitionists may well call me their equal, but their lips do not yet say my name and their ears do not yet hear my story...this is my name. This is who I am. This is how I got here. In the absence of an audience, I will write down my story so that it waits like a restful beast with lungs breathing and heart beating."(P116)  She shows her sadness and anger in simile, comparing a restful beast to the emotion that she could not wait to tell the story.  It is like an extinct volcano. Once it blows, it will release all the energy and come to the death, realizing the meaning of its life. This is also shown in the chapters before. “No, I told myself. Be a djeli, see and remember.” (P74) It explains and emphaize the meaning of title of this chapter “ And my story waits like a restful beast.”

The reason that author change the time from the past to the present might be that he wants to hyperbole the three flashbacks in three books make a perfect connection between each one. The story would ends by the last flashback. It also makes us like we are listening to djeji to tell story by herself and we could understand more about her behaviors in the past.