Manipulate,
to control or influence a person or situation cleverly, unfairly or
unscrupulously.
Reading
through the plays, this was the one element that stood out the most to me, except
the obvious humor factor. Almost all the plays assigned had it, the Stolen
Bacon, the Wife in the Well, the Farmer with the Blur, the Grand Inquisitor in
the Soup and the Pregnant Farmer.
Humans are easily persuaded, even when they know
that the explanation given to them doesn’t make sense. Take the Stolen Bacon
for instance, Hermann started freaking out as soon as he realized that his bacon
was gone. Before meeting the priest, he was certain that his bacon was stolen
and that he wanted the thief caught red handed and punished. But the priest and
his neighbors manipulated him into believing that he is indeed the real thief
and there could be no wrong since he tasted the “evidence” with his own tongue,
he let the situation turned him into the bad guy and started wondering if he was
forgetting anything else that he had stolen. Humans in real lives are very much
like that. We tend to believe things that are put in front of our faces and
refuse to look beneath the surface where the real truth lies. We think that we
are looking straight at the evidence but we don’t realize that they might be
put there to blind us.
The Pregnant Farmer is another good example. How is
it possible for a person, not to mention a male person, to be pregnant with a
horse? Kunz is obviously a full-grown man with a wife and he probably
understands how sex and babies work and yet he would rather believe the words
of a doctor or his farm hand (who does not have the advantage of a proper
education) and believe that he “purged” a horse that ran away as soon as it was
borne. Think of it, he never actually met the doctor in person, he doesn’t know
if the doctor actually saw his urine or what his farm hand handed him to drink
as a cure. For all he knew, he could have been handed a jar with poison. If his
farm hand wanted to kill him, he would have been dead, easily. This reminds me
of how unethical doctors, who put profit before human rights, would tricked
their patients into thinking that they have a much bigger problem than they
actually do. After manipulating the patients and getting them worried and
scared, they would do anything to be fixed, including paying a really big bill just
to get a cure worth half the price paid.
Therefore, manipulation is a powerful tool that
could make or break a person’s ethics and should never be taken lightly.
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ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how easy it was for Kunz to be manipulated. He sends Heinz to seek medical advice from the doctor, fully trusting that Heinz can explain the situation to the doctor and return with a solution. Kunz doesn't even consider that something could get lost in translation. Yes, he was manipulated and wasted his money, but he bears part of the fault for having blind trust.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found interesting is that the "doctor" actually asked legitimate questions when it came to Kunz's symptoms. Whether or not he was constipated, whether or not his stomach hurt etc. Although the diagnosis was wrong the medicine did make Kunz feel better. So in the end the bad "doctor" did actually help Kunz by relieving his symptoms.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point, Danielle. For a con-man, he seems to also be an effective physician, even though, as Whitney put it, he is supposed to be more "hoax than healer."
DeleteManipulation! Yeah! I loved how manipulation was used in the Farmer with the Blur. And that's what I wrote my blog about. People will just believe anything.
ReplyDelete