Madison Werthmann

Mrs. Titcombe
AP English Language and Composition
Hour 5
The Cruelty of Man
In Mark Twains work, The Lowest Animal, Twain argues that men are the cruelest of
all creatures on Earth, and therefore not the highest animal on the evolutionary chain but instead
the lowest animal. He claims that men are cruel because they are the only animal that robs his
helpless fellow of his country and takes possession of it (Twain 648). This has been exemplified
many times over; some of the most recent large-scale instances of lootings and destructions were
the Nanking Massacre and the My Lai Massacre. There are also many other similar events which
have occurred throughout the course of history. All of these events are proof of the observation
of the cruelty of man by Mark Twain. There have been many statements of contradiction to this
observation. In his work Stray Birds, Rabindranath Tagore claimed that Men are cruel, but
Man is kind (Tagore par. 219). On the contrary, the truth of the matter is that while some men
can be kind, mankind as a whole is cruel. This is due to its tendency to submit unquestioningly to
cruel authoritative figures.
One of the most disturbing events of mass slaughter and abduction of innocent people by
a large group was the Nanking Massacre, which occurred over a few weeks in 1937 and 1938.
The Nanking Massacre -- also known as the Rape of Nanking -- was the name given to the raid
of the Chinese capital by the Japanese army.. Over 70,000 troops from the Japanese army spent
seven weeks in the Nationalist city of Nanking. During their time there, they committed grave
cruelties against the 250,000 residents that had not fled the country. They opened fire on the

citizens, looted their homes, and raped the women of Nanking. What made these events so
atrocious was the officiality of it all. All of the looted objects were loaded into Japanese military
trucks to transport back to their own warehouses. They would often then burn down the empty
buildings. The people of the city were killed and tortured in malicious ways. All of this was
under the supervision or command of the higher general Prince Asaka. (The Rape of Nanking).
The willingness to follow cruel and inhumane orders so blindly is a justification for the
observation that Man is not only cruel, but submissive to cruelty.
The Nanking Massacre is just one of many of these recent displays of human malice; the
My Lai Massacre is considered one of the worst wartime atrocities in the Vietnam War (The
My Lai Massacre par. 1) and was committed by American soldiers against 400 innocent
residents of a small southern hamlet of Vietnam in 1968. The hamlet was rumored to have been
harboring members of the Viet Cong, and on that assumption an order was given by an authority
figure to treat the entirety of the hamlet as enemy territory. Thus, murder and rape of the people
ensued. The most macabre detail of the event was that the government and army superiors of
America then went on to cover up the story so that the American people were left unaware of the
atrocities their country had committed (The My Lai Massacre). The despicableness of the
crime itself is unspeakable, but the lie enacted to cover the act presents questionability of the
authority whom otherwise good people follow. If good people are following people who are not
good without question, then that leads to behavior by these otherwise good people which would
be deemed as cruel. Thus, the submission of Man to cruelty is what makes Man cruel.
This unopposed submission is not something that has only occurred recently. It has
occurred for hundreds, even thousands of years. Throughout history, people have allowed
themselves to be ruled by cruel leaders who lead them into doing unspeakable things in the name

of the law. One of the most notorious cruel leaders to date was Attila the Hun, who lived from
roughly 406 AD to 453 AD and was the last leader of the Hunnic Empire. Attila became ruler by
murdering his own brother in hopes of unifying his country. Under his rule, the Hunnic people
plundered and looted land throughout the Roman Empire until eventually the Romans were
forced to secede land to them. (Hunnic Empire). The Huns as a people were often described as
harsh, and were known for conducting their warfare with a merciless efficiency. They took no
prisoners and showed no pity (Attila the Hun par. 4). The Huns were a cruel people because
they were known for having ferocious and merciless leaders. Under a leader that is a warrior and
general first and a leader of the people second, the citizens beneath him are turned into warriors
and soldiers. This leads to a single-minded purpose of fulfilling the commands of a leader
without much thought to what is destroyed in doing so; even if this includes land, wealth, or the
lives of other people.
The Hunnic Empire was not an isolated incident of a group of nomadic people who
showed little pity for people outside of their own; the Vikings were a group of Scandinavian
people who thrived between the years of 800 AD and 1050 AD. In this time, the Vikings sailed
far and wide, and left destruction and despair in their wake. One of their most infamous raids
was also their first: in 793 AD, they stormed a monastery that was considered the holiest of
places in England and pillaged it. They looted the vast amounts of wealth in the monastery and
then proceeded to kidnap several monks to sell into slavery (The Vikings). The Vikings had no
respect for anyone outside of their own people, preferring to care selfishly for themselves and
have no regard for the lives of those that were not theirs. Unlike other large, terrorizing groups of
people, the Vikings had no set government, and therefore no cruel leader to blindly follow.
Instead, the Vikings themselves exemplify Mans selfish nature and need for self-fulfillment

before all else. Despite their tendency to travel in large groups, they were only united by the
commonalities of their religion and language, as well as their need for land and wealth. Thus,
their reasons for plundering and pillaging were not of nationalist submission but of individual
greed and indulgence. These qualities are cruel, although not by nature. Animals, too, are known
to care only for their own survival. However, as Mark Twain states in The Lowest Animal, it is
Mans self-invented moral compass that allows for right or wrong, and mankind has deemed
selfishness to be wrong . Consequentially, because of mankinds ability to be selfish and
unthinking of others, mankind is cruel.
[Some arguments stand that Man is not cruel because there are good men in the world.
People like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. lived to make the world a better and more
peaceful place. And it is true that there are genuinely good people; however, these people are
merely outliers in the grand scheme of the human species. It has been proven through a
psychological experiment that humans have a tendency towards cruelty, especially under the
suggestion or command of authority.] As summarized by Adam Cohen in Four Decades After
Milgram, Were Still Willing to Inflict Pain, a psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram
conducted an experiment in 1963 to test the willingness of a human to cause harm to a stranger
under specified conditions. In order to do so, he attached a learner to pseudo electrodes. He
then brought in a stranger -- the teacher -- and told them to up the voltage on the machine so
that the intensity of the electricity used to shock the learner increased each time they got a
question wrong. It was unknown to the teacher that the learner was not being shocked, but was
only acting; even so, 65 percent of the teachers continued to up the voltage of the electric shocks
until the learners ceased to respond. The conclusion of this experiment was that ordinary people
were willing to administer a lot of pain to innocent strangers if an authority figure instructed

them to do so (par. 6). This experiment proved a basis for the understanding of the human
intellect and the natural boundaries between cruel and not cruel, which seemingly become
blurred when an authoritative figure is put into the equation. People who would typically be
considered good people are willing to do terrible things without much complaint otherwise so
long as they are instructed by someone else to do them. This is yet another example of the
submissiveness of Man to cruelty, except on a much more basic and understandable scale; this
experiment proves that this follower nature can affect anyone of any status of normalcy or
neurotypicality and can cause them to do things they would not otherwise; therefore, any human
being is capable of being cruel, and most will take the opportunity if told to without rebellion.
This is what makes Man cruel.
While there are good people in the world, it can be concluded that mankind as a whole is
cruel, as Mark Twain stated in his piece The Lowest Animal. Mankind is, after all, the
exemplification of all of Man; thus, if all people are capable of being cruel, then mankind itself
could and should be considered cruel by nature (650). All men fall subject to the authoritative
figures who may command them to inflict cruelties upon another, and a majority of the men will.
This drone and swarm mind philosophy has been proven time and time again in instances such as
the Rape of Nanking and the My Lai Massacre, and it has shown itself throughout history in
groups such as the Vikings or the Huns. The human tendency to submit to an authoritative figure
is what gives Man the capability of cruelty, and thus a cruel nature.

Works Cited
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23 Apr. 2015.
Cohen, Adam. "Four Decades After Milgram, We're Still Willing to Inflict Pain." New York Times 29
Dec. 2008: A24(L). Student Resources in Context. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
"Hunnic Empire." Gale Encyclopedia of World History: Governments. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student
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Tagore, Rabindranath. "Stray Birds." The Macmillan Company, 1916. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.eldritchpress.org/rt/stray.htm>.
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Resources in Context. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
"The Rape of Nanking." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. History: War. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Student
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"The Vikings Raid France and England: 8001000." Global Events: Milestone Events Throughout
History. Ed. Jennifer Stock. Vol. 4: Europe. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2014. Student
Resources in Context. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.
Twain, Mark. The Lowest Animal. Literature and Language Arts: Fifth Course. Ed. Kylene
Beers, Carol Jago, Deborah Appleman, and Leila Christenbury. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 2009. 646-650. Print.