Genocide Essay
Imagine that you are a little boy in Germany, with aspirations of becoming an artist. Fifteen years later, you are a struggling artist, gradually running out of money and eventually living in a homeless shelter at the age of twenty. Would you believe it if I told you that one day you would become the world's most cold-blooded dictator who ordered the deaths of six million people simply because of their beliefs? What do you think would come over you to become that kind of person? The culprits behind this selfish act of violence known as Genocide are the fear for you own safety and the belief that your race, religion or life choice is superior over that of someone else.
Now pretend that you are sitting in your home eating dinner when a strange man appears at your house with a gun demanding money. You tell him that your neighbor is much richer than you and to go rob them instead. The man listens to you, and you wonder if you should call the police, but then fear that he will know it was you that called and come to get you later. The next morning you learn that your neighbor and their family had been shot and killed by the robber. Would you be able to live with yourself knowing that your selfish act may have caused the deaths of a family? That is a flaw in most humans. They avoid harm to themselves by deflecting it to somewhere else, or even someone else. But fear for your own life usually doesn't result in the deaths of large numbers of people, like in the Holocaust.
Let's go back to being Hitler. So you're the most powerful man in the world, right? Which means your religion, race, and choices are much better than anyone else's. So the Jews in Germany don't deserve to live because they don't agree with your religious beliefs? Believing something like that is bad enough, but loading six million people in gas chambers goes just a little over the line. So how do you sleep at night knowing that you gave the OK to kill that many innocent people for such a bad reason? No sane person would believe that that's ok, so what does that make Hitler?
In the 1940's, this Genocide problem seemed to be resolved with Hitler's death, but it's still killing millions of people worldwide in places like Rwanda, Cambodia, and Sudan. So what do we do about people with the mindset that they deserve to live more than the next person, or that people need to die because of their life choice? Let me know when you have an answer.
Greetings!
Well, you certainly make some valid points here! You don't say what the exact assignment was. I'm a little unclear on what the thesis of your essay is. It seems to be "Genocide is bad. How could anyone commit genocide? I have no idea." Whatever the assignment was intended to accomplish, make sure that it does so.
I like the way you start with the "struggling artist ends up in homeless shelter and becomes cold-blooded dictator" bit. However, you throw in "the fear for you own safety and the belief that your race, religion or life choice is superior over that of someone else" without explanation. How do you know this? Where did these beliefs come from? How did Hitler arrive at these beliefs?
I also like the anecdote about the neighbor sending the thugs next door, but again, the transition to talking about it being "a flaw in most humans" is rather abrupt. From the action in the neighbor's house to suddenly talking about the psychology of human beings seems almost as if there are two different papers going on here.
Perhaps if I knew exactly what instructions you were given with regard to the assignment, I could give you more direction. These are the impressions I can give you now.
Thanks!
Sarah, EssayForum.com
