The Bystander Effect In Kate Grenville's 'The Officer'

It is not as easy as one would think to come to the rescue of another during their time of need. The reasoning behind this is explained by a social-psychological phenomenon known as the 'bystander effect'. The bystander effect refers to cases in which a presence of people deters individuals from providing assistance to a 'victim' in a time of need: the more people there are, the less likely they are to offer help. Possibly the most infamous case of the bystander effect was the 1964 murder of Catherine 'Kitty' Genovese. On March 13th, 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed on the street across from her apartment complex. Her screams and exclamations of "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!", allegedly woke only twelve fellow occupants of her apartment. Kitty was left …show more content…
Nevertheless, experts believed that the bystander effect was truly responsible for the lack of assistance from witnesses. Following this, psychologists coined the term Genovese Syndrome, or the bystander effect. In Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant, a work of historical fiction, there is evidence of the bystander effect when the young protagonist, Daniel Rooke, is tormented by a bully at school. Being of an average family, his father a simple clerk, Daniel Rooke was the ideal victim for the antagonist, Lancelot Percival. Born to a rich family, his every need waited on by an assembly of servants, Lancelot Percival saw himself as superior to all his classmates, Daniel Rooke especially. Because of this, Rooke was bullied by the pompous boy, having ink spilt on his shirt on receiving punches as they would pass by. All of Rooke's fellow classmates would look on as he was subjected to torment everyday, not a single standing up for the shy boy or offering their sympathies, despite the large number of