Philip Roth

The famous Shakespearean tragedy King Lear depicts King Lear of Britain’s rollercoaster path from foolishness to wisdom and his eventual tragic downfall. Lear divides his kingdom amongst his three daughters: Cordelia who is banished for not correctly expressing her love for the King, and Goneril and Regan who turn against him in order to gain more power. Likewise, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres tells a tale molded around King Lear where the owner of a 1000-acre farm named Larry agrees to hand it…

Dark Beauty in Shakespeare’s Sonnets Sonnet is a poetry form that has lived its golden years in England during the Elizabethan times. Among them, Shakespeare’s 154 have been poetry lovers’ favourite for centuries. What is essentially done in those sonnets is, of course nothing other than praising love, particular lovers to be exact, and their beauty. However, in some particular sonnets, Shakespeare challenges the conventional beauty standards of his time, which was “fair (white) skin, rosy…

The Stanford Experiment was conducted on August 16 of 1971 through August 20 of 1971. The experiment was led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. The experiment was then funded due to a grant from the United States Office of Naval Research; which was of interest for the United States Navy conductors and members, as well as the United States Marine Corps. The military funded the experiment to help determine the cause of conflict occurring between military guards and prisoners.…

An experiment to test how far a person is willing to go in the name of obedience was conducted at Yale University. People are usually obedient to people with power or above them, therefore, in this experiment an administrator would tell the test subjects to shock the victim, who was obviously, an actor/someone in on the experiment. In this article the author, Stanley Milgram elaborates and describes the experiment. Like any other article out there, there are weakness along with strengths. The…

Zimbardo’s experiment solicited young men to spend two weeks in a simulated prison experience. The men who were responded were divided into prison guards and prisoners. The prisoners were treated as such, they were arrested, fingerprinted and sent to the simulated jail. According to the experiment with in a few days upon video observations the men began to crack under the pressure of the harsh treatments, such as cleaning the toilets with their bare hands. The experiment was ended abruptly due…

In the preface of Philip Zimbardo’s non-fiction book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, he uncovers various reasonings on what influenced him into conducting the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Part of his inspiration for writing this book was heavily based on the Abu Ghraib Prison Trial where he was the expert witness to one of the prison guards, Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Douglas, who was convicted of the many tortures and murders of the prisoners that occurred at…

The Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971, a mock prison was built in the basement of the psychology building of Stanford University. About twenty-four male students were randomly picked to play the role of either a prisoner or a guard for two weeks. Prisoners were treated like every other criminal, being arrested at their own homes, without warning, and being taken away. When the prisoners arrived at the prison they were stripped naked, lost all their personal possessions, were removed from the…

This essay will examine two psychological research studies which were carried out in the past with particular focus on the ethical principles of each study with relation to the ethical principles administered by the British Psychological Society’s code of ethics and conduct. These studies will be briefly outlined before an analysis of each is made with regards to some practices which would not be considered ethical today. The first study was conducted by Milgram (1963) in order to explain why…

You just got accepted to your dream college and have enthusiastically spent all week packing all your articles, and now you are driving hours on end to your new residence, a college dorm in Stanford, California, on the Stanford University campus. You are so thrilled, but also nervous, to start a new adventure here in California. It’s your first day and you are eager to go to your classes and become that college student you’ve pictured for what seems like forever. While walking through the campus…

When you hear about a celebrity going to jail, one would have an active imagination as to what kind of issue this brought on. However, in the case of Nick Cannon, the actor goes to a D.C. jail where he sits down and learns with the inmates. Nick Cannon is a Howard student and he goes where Bahiyyah Muhammad, a criminologist and assistant professor at Howard University goes. He teaches "Inside Out: Crime and Justice Behind the Wall" at the D.C. jail. Once a week, for three hours, Nick Cannon…