Advance Essay #4 Innocent people and Violence

Violence is a behavior that involves physical force that intends to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Depending on the person will depend on how bad a person handles a situation with violence. For example A guilty person or a person who has anger issues may handle a bad argument with violence and physically hurt someone so bad that they might kill them. So what about the innocent and/or the /good people, how do they respond to violence? Catherine Le Magueresse who is a researcher on the subject states,  “Everyone in feminist circles and in the justice system were not at ease with this case, because when you are a victim of physical abuse and you kill your abuser, you become like him in a way — you choose violence.” I believe she is trying to say that even if the other person was evil for what they did, a good person becomes evil like that person when you do something violent back to them.

Violence is always going to happen. It doesn’t make a person good or evil because good  and evil are the same words to describe people that  are nice and mean. Someone who is good is usually the nice person and whoever is evil is the mean person. But in the ted talk called The Psychology of evil stated that “the line between good vs evil is moveable” which is the truth because people all have different perspectives of what is good and what is evil. Their is many things a person can say that a person is good as well as evil. Someone may think someone is still good even if they did bad/evil things just like someone can say someone is evil for doing something bad but they do good things.

People often think violence solves everything. For example when a child may get into a fist fight in school. The fight might have started from one child  bullying or doing something wrong to an innocent child.  The innocent child would then  think he needs to hit the child who started it all to show he is tough. In his mind he believes he has to because if he doesn’t prove himself then the other children at school will think he is a wimp or weak. Even though the child who started it can be considered evil, the child who then raised their hand to the other child will be equally as evil because he physically hurt that child.

In Vietnam, followed by soldiers, the young children were walking away from their village   and the looks on their faces gave off they were crying, upset, and devastated by their homes  burned down in flames. Not many children can be seen, it’s possible that the village was either small or the children were shot and killed.The website, “War children”, talks about what children go through in any war. Children are usually innocent and do not have any part of what goes on in their village. They are not the ones causing the problems, so it makes me wonder why are they being killed or physically hurt and it makes me wonder why won’t they  do anything about it. This website states “Millions of children and young people worldwide are affected by armed conflict. They are confronted with physical harm, violence, danger, exploitation, fear and loss. Many children are forced to flee. Some witness the death of loved ones. Some are forced to pull the trigger themselves.”  In Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech he talked about how terrible it was for vietnam to go through what they did in the war. America is suppose to be free and show the image of freedom but that all changed because the people who weren’t enemies before became their enemy and kill many of their people and destroyed their homes. Martin Luther King stated ” The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.” I believe he said this because seeing what the people did to the Vietnamese people who were innocent, lose so many love ones, and material things in their life; he wants us to back at this. He hopes for us to see that soldiers for the U.S who are suppose to be good, helped the bad and did bad things to Vietnam and its people. As we look deeper into this, it was all violence created by bad people to good people. The Vietnam responded back by fighting in which they also killed many people, but that doesn’t make them evil because if they didn’t stand up for their village, everyone would haved died.

This Vietnam War picture shows  how innocent people were being attacked and killed in their own home. All people respond to violence differently regardless if they are innocent or not. One innocent person may get physically hurt by someone else and not do anything about it. The other innocent person may get physically hurt and do something back which would not be wrong for them to do because it is self defense. Although you could say they would be evil as well because they are still hurting someone back.

Their are too many perspectives to say what an innocent person is because you may think that person is innocent and the other person may think that person is not innocent. No one can really tell how an innocent handles violence unless you are basing it off your perspective.

Work cited:

1. Blaise, Lilia. "He Abused Her for Years. She Shot Him. France Asks: Is It Self-Defense?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 Mar. 2016. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/world/europe/murder-of-abusive-husband-casts-stark-light-on-domestic-violence-in-france.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1>.

2. "Beyond Vietnam**." Beyond Vietnam**. Stanford University, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016. <http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/>.

3. Holland, War Child. "EFFECTS OF WAR ON CHILDREN."Warchildholland.org. War Child Holland, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <http://www.warchildholland.org/effects-war-children>.