Forgiveness In The Sunflower By Zimbardo

Forgiving an individual can be an appropriate action if the one’s action is not significant if it does not cause life or long lasting effects. However, in the case of a major offense such as taking the life of an innocent individual, one cannot be forgiven on any level. The act of taking away a person’s life is ultimate and cannot be undone. In The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal demonstrates the essence of forgiveness through a situation as a holocaust survivor. Simon faced a situation where he met a SS soldier, Karl who was facing death and asked Simon for forgiveness due to a guilty conscious. Research from Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo are used to demonstrates the true intentions for Karl’s action and behavior. Milgram’s experiment “The …show more content…
Zimbardo’s experiment reveals how the role we play can affect our behavior that processes to the actions we make. People can view Karl as a victim of manipulation due to the position he was in, yet, the similarity of his situation of the “guards” in Zimbardo’s experiment was “In contrast, most of the guards seemed to be distressed by the decision to stop the experiment and it appeared to us that they had become sufficiently involved in their roles that they now enjoyed the extreme control and power which they exercised and were reluctant to give it up”(Zimbardo 5). Karl’s seemed to be “sufficiently involved” as Milgram stated in his experiment, due to his role of power during the holocaust. Karl aggravated many of the Jewish people lives and made them endure hardship making his action not forgivable to my perspective. Like the prisoners from Zimbardo experiments the Jewish people faced a more severe situation of “...exhibited disbelief at the total invasion of their privacy, constant surveillance, and atmosphere of oppression in which they were living”(Zimbardo 7). The oppression that the Jew’s faced was by being stripped of their identities by giving them number for names, stealing their freedom, and abusing them with excessive force, which was the job of the Nazi’s. After reading Zimbardo’s article on his experiment, I can see how the actions Karl executed occurred, however, I consider those actions to be deemed unforgivable. The guards in Zimbardo’s experiment experience the same role of power like the SS soldiers as they enforced brutal roles by “Being a guard carried with it social status within the prison, a group identity (when wearing the uniform), and