For most people, the pressure to conform begins even before they are born. Once the ultrasound images arrive, our rooms, toys, and soccer pajamas become gender themed. In elementary school, we are constantly ranked in terms of brand vs. generic binders and snacks. In high school, we carefully designed our clothing and backpacks to achieve that effortlessly cool look. Let’s not even start with what we do in college.
Despite being such a normal part of everyday life, there is something inherently creepy about groupthink. Whether you’re a Borg, a Stepford wife, or just a nervous freshman, everyone needs an occasional reminder why not run with the pack. To call the guns really big, here are three classic literary scenarios that can help you wave the weird flag for him.
Scenario One: Colonial Africa. The landscape is wild, the natives are unknown, and the Europeans are doing their best to ruin it. Enter Mr. Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A British ivory trader living deep in the Congolese desert, Kurtz is a charismatic and intelligent type A guy who also happens to be a psychopath. Taking a unique turn in Into the Wild, Kurtz abandons European civilization, amasses a private army of indigenous and European henchmen, and goes on a murderous rampage.
By the time our narrator, Charlie Marlow, tracks him down, Kurtz is decorating his private jungle fortress with impaled heads. What’s worse, despite the fact that Charlie a) goes after Kurtz knowing what he’s capable of, and b) witnesses Kurtz’s insanity firsthand, his experience leaves us wondering if he, too, has succumbed to Kurtz’s influence. of Kurtz. While Heart of Darkness gives us an interesting look at a person’s power of persuasion, there’s also something to be said for the sweeping drive of the mob rule. Which brings us to our second literary classic.
Scenario Two: Colonial America. The continent is huge, the colonies are tiny, and the pioneers are so uptight that the Church of England doesn’t want them. Add a reverend’s daughter and a mysterious illness to the mix and you get Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trials. Beginning with an angry girl’s accusations of witchcraft, the story snowballs as the entire town turns against itself in an eat-or-be-eaten fight to the death.
In the end, the victors are either accusers or (false) confessors, while those who try to keep their noses clean are summarily executed. What makes this scarier than Kurtz’s private army is the fact that a witch hunt doesn’t require a mastermind; Combine ten parts of society and one part of fear and you have a recipe for disaster. Of course, the mafia mentality formula also works in the absence of civilization. Just take a look at our third literary classic.
Scenario three: the desert island. The island is small, the little ones are even smaller, and their chances of being found are slim to none. When you combine all the worst parts of Heart of Darkness and The Crucible, the resulting horror story can only be William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a story about a schoolyard accidentally being moved to an island in the middle of the ocean. Peaceful. The guys polarize around the two strongest personalities, but since they probably still wore night lights in their previous life, they’re not exactly immune to good old-fashioned mass hysteria, either.
By the time the kids are painting their faces, ritually killing boars, and waging war on each other, you begin to wonder if “youthful innocence” is a contradiction in terms. The story ends with the boys being discovered by civilized grown men in the middle of a civilized, grown-up world war. You know, in case you felt happy for a second there.
Together, these three stories warn us against the corrupting influence of influential leaders and mindless mobs, social constructions and wild savagery, respected adults and smelly tweens, hysterical girls and barbaric boys. In short, trust no one but yourself.
What is the point.