Atonement And Mountain Standard Time Analysis

An act of violence is very common; ranging from cyber bullying and name calling, to war and genocide. People live in fear of the major scenes of violence; but little do they know that with enough people with them, they can be worse than people like Hitler and Stalin. Mobs, like an army, are more ferocious than people who caused great travesties and genocides; the more, the scarier. In the works of Atonement, by Ian McEwan, and Mountain Standard Time, by Paul Horgan, show these scenes of violence by a mob -with some graphic ideas- to present their ferocity and menacing power. In Atonement, the victim was being accused by fellow soldiers for the letting one die. The scene takes place in the beginning of World War II; the Tommies (land-based infantry) were air-struck by Nazi planes and they found one of their
Ian McEwan was using this scene as a way to show anger and tension that builds up in war; and if one thing goes wrong, someone is going to be accused, even if it was not their fault. Once one person accuses someone of something going wrong, others will join in to blow off steam, then soon, the whole platoon is accusing the same guy. Paul Horgan uses a real life account of how -when he was 14- witnessed a man get attacked by a group of people, accusing him of being a German spy and traitor. He uses this to show how a mob can get what it wants once it has overpowered the victim. There are mobs that go against this idea of one, such as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, which was full of peaceful protesters. Even so, the idea of a mob is mostly that it is a group of people who are not happy about something and take out their frustrations on one person, who is most likely innocent. If one man was nearly killed by a group of, say, 20-30 people; imagine a nationwide attack against a specific group of people, cruel and