How Discourse Can Control People's Mind In Prison

Red finishes the statement by illustrating the use of force the prison. The inmates have to get used to the idea of the low life, otherwise, they will be led to death. Analyzing the mind of the prisoners, we can unravel how discourse may control people’s minds in prison. In this way the social and episodic memory of each of the inmates will be subjectively crafted by the authorities in the ways they prefer it to be. Being a low life for every con is a socially instructed view about themselves. Red posits this fact by mentioning the fact that by forgetting that you are in prison, woe is you. That is direct reference to the usage of power in prison life. They either behave in the way that they are required or they will be punished or dead.
Van Dijk clarifies the process with the distinction between personal or episodic memory and social memory. Personal memory is the store for our subjective representations of our minds about life experiences. The representations are made by the actions and happenings during the lives of people. Social memory refers to our experience of life that is socio-culturally made. This refers to attitudes or ideologies that are shared among people or groups of people in societies. Van Dijk posits that “discursive mind control may now be defined as the control of the mental models and/or social representations of other people. Such control is a form of domination (power abuse)…” (1998, p.10) In the society of this prison, two levels of knowledge are dealt with. The knowledge or the beliefs of each of the individuals of the inmates and their socially shared opinions, their attitudes and ideologies. Broksie is one of the characters who is paroled at an old age. Red