But there is a problem with applying the master motive explanation to the Milgram experiment: the tendency to obey, while in one sense an aspect of character, is in another sense a sign of the lack of character.
His novels are picaresque parades, with theatrical and ultimately cheerful Grand Guignol episodes, plenty of sex (less gymnastic than imaginatively sensual), clowns (parti-colored jeering Harlequin and white-silked moony Pierrot), jerky interruptions and side trips and too much of the parade master's explanations and policing.
When the wedding is shattered by the news that there's already a Mrs. Rochester, Jane listens to her former master's anguished explanation about his mad, vampirish wife in the attic.
But Greene is master of the clear explanation and knows when readers' eyes are about to glaze over.
The teacher-student relationship:a translation of the explanation of the master and student relationship, how to follow the master, and how to teach and listen to the dharma.
For local politicians to directly blame the island's $72bn "unpayable" – and yet coming-due – debt solely on US economic policy is not a good enough explanation: every colonial master needs an accomplice, and Puerto Rico's political class has served their masters well.
So scholars began to look for a more general explanation, a single master theory.
Instead, after two days of intense interrogation, Ms. Wheeler-Holloway said she came away struck by the consistency of Mr. Masters's story and his explanation that the graphic drawings were a product of teenage angst and nothing more.
And though I would a hundred times rather listen to him on old masters than old bangers, his explanation of how he came to be spending nights at Wimbledon stadium was beguiling.
For master sommeliers, there is no simple explanation.
