{"id":158,"date":"2018-02-18T19:07:33","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T00:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/?p=158"},"modified":"2018-02-18T19:07:33","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T00:07:33","slug":"power-for-the-powerful-all-or-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/uncategorized\/power-for-the-powerful-all-or-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Power for the Powerful: All or All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orwell’s\u00a0Shooting An Elephant<\/em> represents an interesting display of the power dynamic between the British Imperialists and the Burmese population they are oppressing. While Orwell attempts to create a sympathetic look on the white man oppressed by his own system and tries to discover some type of power that lies with the Burmese people, his story fails to recognize the violence and systemic race politics that clearly keep any power from the larger oppressed majority.<\/p>\n

A quote from the story, “And my who life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at (3),” shows the starkly ironic contrast between the fears of the Burmese people and the white officer. The Burmese are subjected to violence, regardless of failing to perform their social roles, and they have no choice in the matter. The lives of these people are not valued in this system, and only at the end of the story does Orwell acknowledge this, “…because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie (4).” Orwell’s characters inability to reconcile his own power dynamic in contrast to the one he perceives in the elephant situation elucidates his lack of understanding of the way his race and position really affect the performances of those around him. He seems absurdly concerned about his public image when he could easily use his own power along with the incredible power of the system he works in to reinstate his place above the Burmese.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Orwell’s\u00a0Shooting An Elephant represents an interesting display of the power dynamic between the British Imperialists and the Burmese population they are oppressing. While Orwell attempts to create a sympathetic look on the white man oppressed by his own system and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1897,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1897"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}