{"id":264,"date":"2017-09-24T16:22:04","date_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/?p=264"},"modified":"2017-09-24T16:22:04","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:22:04","slug":"the-british-facade-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/second-blog-power\/the-british-facade-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"The British Facade of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In \u201cShooting an Elephant,\u201d author and narrator George Orwell exposes the facade of control that the British have over the Burmese people. In the traditional colonial system a minority of outsiders\u2013in this case, the British\u2013have domination over a large minority of natives\u2013the Burmese\u2013due to their military strength. Orwell, however, describes a power situation, where he, a British colonial and police officer, is insulted, tripped on the soccer field, and jeered at by the so called \u201coppressed\u201d Burmese. Orwell is confused and humiliated due to not only the actions of the Burmese, but also because it is intrinsically understood in theory that the British have the power in the society. Orwell, and his fellow ex-pats, therefore, must maintain a facade of power, even though they, in fact, as individuals, are powerless against Burmese majority. The shooting of the elephant demonstrates this complicated dynamic and facade of power. Orwell both does not want to and \u201cought not\u201d to kill the elephant, and yet he does, because of the pressure of the crowd and the necessity to maintain his own mask of power. He declares that he could \u201cfeel&#8230;two thousand wills pressing [him] forward, irresistibly,\u201d and further describes himself as an \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.\u201d In this way, Orwell himself becomes the oppressed, overpowered individual at the mercy of a larger authority. He writes in the end that he only shot the elephant \u201csolely to avoid looking like a fool,\u201d further attesting to the irrationality of the current power dynamics, and the need for a more rational system of authority to be implemented.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cShooting an Elephant,\u201d author and narrator George Orwell exposes the facade of control that the British have over the Burmese people. In the traditional colonial system a minority of outsiders\u2013in this case, the British\u2013have domination over a large minority &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/second-blog-power\/the-british-facade-of-power\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1716,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-second-blog-power","tag-second-blog-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}