Ethics In Charlotte's Web

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” the opening line to E.B. White’s famous children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web, is iconic for her questioning of the norm of killing the runt of the litter, grips the audience highlighting that there is a choice in the matter and thus that there are moral repercussions for doing so. Most of those involved in the holocaust and the devastation of the Congo are akin to the father in his novel, they followed the notion that a certain group were weak and deserved to die for the benefit of the whole, and killed, placing the moral weight on those customs instead of on themselves. It is easy to blame the system; however, Papa never had to pick up that axe, and no one had to take civilizationalist, anti-Semitic, or racist …show more content…
In the holocaust, many soldiers blamed orders for their actions instead of taking personal accountability for following them. In eastern Europe when the Nazis took other they lined Jews up and shot them. Some soldiers chose to sit out. One such soldier claimed “When asked if I was reprimanded for my refusal: I would have to say this was not the case” illustrating that even those following orders were doing so were out of personal choice not force from the higher ups. This ability for individual choice and the tendency to falsely blame one’s environment is even more evident in accounts of the Congo. Many lower ranks were alone with no one else to blame directly for their actions. These men had the agency and understanding to behave morally however they chose to perpetrate atrocities, often resorting to blaming environmental factors such as the weather for forcing their action. These justifications are difficult to believe since millions have lived and continue to live in tropical climates, without becoming spontaneously genocidal. Exemplifying the idea that while environmental force is a convenient excuse for denying accountability in atrocities, they cannot negate accountability since environmental factors never truly incapacitated militiamen or lower level soldiers from making …show more content…
The majority of these choices in these case were made by the lower levels, and thus the majority of the accountability rests upon their shoulders. These individual choices were not made out of lack of moral understanding or agency. The effects of the soldiers and militia men's actions were personally understood and accepted. So, while it is easier to look upon history and blame the leader, to tell one's children to not be like Hitler or King Leopold the II, to not be ‘evil’. It is important to understand, that the true evil, the true destruction, came out of lower ranking individuals, regular people, choosing to strike with morally tumultuous axes because those choices and people that are accountable for the majority of