Daniel Rawson

In Jacques Ellul’s interview about the betrayal of technologically he discusses the theme of responsibility and how people in our society fail to claim accountability for their actions, regardless weather or not the consequences are directly related to their actions. He illustrates this point by telling a story about when a dam that was built by a long list of people breaks, no one claims responsibility for the dam breaking. He talks about each process and worker that went into constructing this dam and he says how no one wants to step forward and take the blame when the dam breaks because everyone had their own specific task they had completed successfully. Jacques makes the argument that the work is so fragmented and broken up into smaller pieces that no one is truly responsible when the dam breaks. Each person is responsible for their own specific task and that’s all he has to do. If something goes wrong in the larger process of constructing the dam, the responsibility does not fall on any single worker.

This way of thinking draws parallel to the way the people in the town of Guellen functioned. As the town was descending further into debt and chaos the people of Guellen continued to buy nicer food and alcohol regardless of the debt they were accumulating. This lack of responsibility from the townspeople illustrates how Claire was able to use her power to get what she wanted at the end of the story simply by offering the town a bailout so they would not have to be held accountable for their frivolous spending.

Another relationship between Jacques story about the dam and The Visit is the failure of any single person to take responsibility for the death of Ill. At the end of the story the doctor proclaims that Ill has died from a heart attack and immediately after that the mayor chimes in by saying Ill, “died of joy”. Regardless of the fact that each of these people contributed to the death of Ill they maintained a neutral ground and avoided taking any responsibility for the death of Ill because they were additional forces at play then their contribution to Ill’s death. The conclusion of this story can be used as support for the claim Jacques was trying to make that as long as people are part of a larger system they will continue to deflect blame and responsibility if something goes wrong.