At first, “Brownies” appears as a humorous story about camping trip of the future girl scouts. They laugh at silly things and words they read in dictionaries without knowing the definitions of them. However, behind the silliness of the characters, the story hides a serious purpose and meaning.
Afar from indisputable racial conflict, the phenomenon of group thinking or “groupthink”, a term that often applies to a group of people, who take irrational actions with the purpose of brutalize other group, was emphasized in the story. According to Janis Irving, phycologist who first introduced the term in 1972 - “ [a] group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making”. Clearly, the “groupthink” is traceable from the very first sentence of the story – “the girls had decided to kick the asses” - the assumption of unanimous decision is inferred from this phrase, when later we learn that there were no rational in “ass kicking” act what so ever.
It all started from initiation of Arnetta, who has the most authority among the…show more content… She then “suddenly knew there was something mean that I could not stop”, although she tried to stop the rest of the girls from beating Troop 909 back in the camp. Laura has sanity of what is morally good and bad, and she demonstrated it throughout the story. She even wants to separate herself from immorality if other girls - “I wanted nothing more than to be through with it all”, showing discomfort of being one of the “group thinkers”. If only Laurel had more courage to speak up with more confidence, she would have made a wise and comprehensive leader. She even had her leadership moment, when the girls asked her opinion “for the first time”, and she successfully commanded “let’s just go