8/19/2019 Brittney Bentivegna Mob Mentality

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My Writing Goals:

1.) To improve my voice

2.) To improye my word choice

The ffects

of Mob

Mentality

On your dentity

By: Brittney Bentivegna

1\11eyes are on you. You try to stand your ground; you vlant to, you ~ EEDo.

Giving in to themwould mean going against all the morals you ve grown up with.. You

wouldn t be yourself anymore. There d be no way to distinguish you from the

~

from the cruelty of this world. Yet, they re closing in onyou, waiting for you to join

them. And if you don t, well, you can say goodbye to any chance of happiness. TheYerJ

idea is too much to bear. Against your will, you realize your only option is to ~ e in.

Slowly, paInfully you let go of your true self as they enclose you. There s no use

fighting, all your strength is gone. Without even a moment s notice, you ve become one

of them; mob mentality has devoured your identity.

The scene I just described for you may sound a bit far-fetched or something only

Hollywood could come up with, but in reality it s something that happens daily. For

example, if a kid trips in the hallway and, despite your kind manner, you stan ]~mehjn~

with the others for fear of the consequences of standing out, you ve just given in tomob

mentality. I also came across this idea numerous times while reading the books TIle

Chocolate War, Inventing Elliot, and ToKill a Mockingbird, and therefore chose it as my

unifying theme. I started out with Robert Cormier s modem classic The Chocolate :ar.

Throughout the novel, the characters are forced to constantly endure the cruelness of the

school s secret society, the Vigils. Due to their reputation for causing corruptio~

manipulation, and pain, I think it s safe to say these boys are the mob of the story,

along with their commander in chief, Brother Leon. The first event that stood out tome

as proof that mob mentality devours your identity is when the Vigils gave a peer DaIlled

Goober the assignment of destroying one of the Brother s classrooms. If it weren t for

this assignment, he would never have fulfilled such an awful task. Gooberwas a

sympathetic teenager with integrity and his heart in the right place. The very idea of

destroying old Brother Eugene s room was nauseating, yet what could he say? Vith all

the Vigils surrounding him, especially the head honcho Archie, he finally, reluctantly

gave him. And by doing so he not only failed to stand up to the mob mentality, but lost

his identity along the way. Hewas no longer an individual, but rather part of the crowd,

part of the darkness. The main character, Jerry, alsowent through a similar

transformation. He started out trying to defeat the Vigils, but because of all the pain they

caused him, he ended up stepping away fromhis courageous self and allowing the mob to

conquer. In fact, it seemed to me as if the whole school was caught up in this ; ;mob.

Before Jerry, not one person had tried to defy the Vigils. I m sure half of the boys at

Trinity High School were disgusted by the system and knew it was down right cruel, but

because they were afraid to speak their minds, their voices were never heard. Theywent

to school each day knowing there was no way out, no reprieve, no appeal. The law of

The Vigils was final, everyone at Trinity knew that (32). And because of this they

weren t viewed as the unique individuals that they were, but merely part of the :mob.

If you ve ever read Inventing Elliot by GrahamGardner, you know that it has a

similar storyline to The Chocolate War, creating many examples of how mob mentality

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devours one s identity. The overall idea that all the student are too petrifierl

 

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against the secret society, in this case The Guardians, is the same. Howe er~rlk r~are

numerous specific examples that differentiate the two novels but still get the pcim a.cross..

For instance, the main character, Elliot, having had it drilled into his head by the mobs cf

his past that the only way to survive is to blend in, ended up hurting his ~~ :frieDd.. H~

knew that this friend of his (Ben)had been previously targeted by the G~ and be

couldn t afford to take the risk of them coming after him next. Therefore, although be

had never been one to hurt others, he abandoned Ben in order to please the mob; :m~ did

he know he was abandoning his identity as well. As for Be~ in a way he also lost

himself through mob mentality. The Guardians had classified him as a loser, and hrongb::

him so much pain he didn t have any strength to prove them wrong. Giyen 1ris

magnificent talent with photography it was obvious that Ben was far from being a loser,

but because he didn t want to start any trouble, he chose to think ofhimse1fthe -.:\JRYk;

wantedhimto. HeeventoldElliotafterinvitinghimoveroneweekendthat M

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meant Saturday. I wouldn t expect- I wouldn t expect anyone to risk being seen~~.

 (98). Thisjust goes to show how much damage the mob is capable of

~

The third and final book I read during our class novel study is Harper Lee s best-

seller To Kill a Mockingbird. So far I ve been explaining books that refer to the theme

that mob mentality devours one s identity and this is no exception. Even thon~h one cf

the main topics here is standing up for what you believe in, the reason Atticus Finch s

decision startled the town somuch wasn t because everybody else loathed b1ach, bor::

because they were scared of the consequences if they showed sympathy towards them.

All the comments, stares, death threats that Atticus received fromwhat could be

classified as the mob may have done some damage to Mr. Finch, but one thing be ~1CiS

able to keep was his identity. Because he was defying the mob mentality, eyeryone

became aware of his kind heart and true self. However, people who didn t speak up and

show their true colors were then stereotyped as being a person they weren t. For

example, everybody in Maycomb County looked at Mr. Dolphus Raymond as a lunatic

that sat around sipping whiskey all day, when truthfully he was a selfless human v.iw

drank nothing more than Coca-Cola. But because he didn t stand up to the mob,

nobody knew the real him, resulting in a loss of his identity. Aside from thi~ the other

significant part of the story that relates to my unifying theme iswhen Calpurnia, a black

who served fot the Finches, took Scout and Jem Finch to church. Throughout these two

children s lives, Cal had always spoken properly while in their presence. Therefore, it

came as a great shock to them that while at the black church she spokewhat Scout called

 nigger-talk (125). It wasn t that Cal was uneducated, as a matter of fact she came

across as quite knowledgeable, but her fellow blacks didn t want to know that. In the

words of Calpurnia Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks talk at home it d be

out of place, wouldn t it? Now what ifI talked white-folks talk at church, and v.ith my

neighbors? They d think I was puttin on airs to beat Moses...in second place folks don t

like to have somebodyaround knowin more than they do... You re not gonna change any

of them by talkin right, they ve got towant to learn themselves, and when they don t

want to learn there s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language

(126). This goes to show that Cal is no different trom any of the other characters I ve

mentioned. She too hid her distinctiveness, which in this case is knowledge, in order to

prevent disruption within the system.

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The second aspect of this project was to create a visual that exemplifiedmy

unifying theme. In order to represent the characters whose identities v, ereswept ~: I

wanted to use an object that could clearly be distinguished amongst its surroundings as

proof that these characters were once individuals. In the en