![]() ![]() ![]() This powerful play provides a fictional representation of how a very ‘normal’ university professor becomes enmeshed in the inner workings of the Third Reich. This paper makes connections to Arendt’s work by examining Taylor’s play Good. This means there are many others just ‘like him’, who would also act with the same unscrupulous determination. After observing his trial, Arendt decided that Eichmann was actually ‘terribly normal’. As a cog in a large bureaucratic machine, Arendt argued that he was able to distance and distract himself from the consequences of his actions. Eichmann was an efficient bureaucrat who obediently followed orders. Arendt claimed that it would be more accurate to describe him as a ‘clown’ rather than a ‘monster’. ![]() Her report on the trial of the German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann controversially asserted that Eichmann was not the ‘monster’ he was assumed to be. Hannah Arendt is well known for her work on banality, thoughtlessness and evil. The audience of Good find themselves confronted with the following question-‘What would you have done?’ I argue that the theatre is a powerful medium to explore these complex issues. Taylor highlights the importance of appreciating how people can be steadily incorporated into an ideologically destructive system. This provocative play examines how a seemingly ‘good’ and intelligent university professor can gradually become caught up in the workings of the Third Reich. This paper specifically addresses these issues by focusing on C. The work of Erich Fromm ( Escape from Freedom), Hannah Arendt ( Eichmann in Jerusalem), Zygmunt Bauman ( Modernity and the Holocaust) and Ernest Becker ( Escape from Evil) have all contemplated the driving force of aggression and mass violence to further our understanding of how people are capable of engaging in extreme forms of cruelty and violence. There are important studies that have directly focused on how, in times of conflict, it is possible for previously law abiding people to commit the most atrocious acts of cruelty and violence. ![]()
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