Blog Post 2: Topic 1

Blog Post 2: Topic 1

The short stories, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell both expose problems related to racism. In “A Rose for Emily”, the racism is between southern and all other people in the town. “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell more directly shows that racism between European and Colonized people in Burma. The stories show different influence of privileged people: Faulkner writes how people’s behavior let Emily does whatever she wants, while Orwell writes about how people’s behavior pushes him to act in a way he doesn’t like.

In “Shooting an Elephant”, author largely uses narrators’ mental activity to discuss about his feeling about the colonies and imperialism. The narrator’s thinking that “imperialism was an evil thing” and a white privileged white “shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives’”. Many other comments can be found in different places in the story. It makes author’s opinion be delivered to readers more directly. Moreover, when describe the narrator at that moment when he decides how to shoot the elephant, there are about six paragraphs describing narrator’s debate in his mind. Compared to the length of the whole story, it is very long. When I read this part of the story, I was worried for him, because there are so many people waiting for his action, but his hesitation that moving back and forth between decisions seems endless, and much of them is criticize the imperial system makes him fall into such position that he has to do the things that people want, no matter he himself want to do it or not. He criticized that the racism makes himself, a privileged white man, be pushed to do the things he doesn’t want, but it is ironic, he still shoots the elephant without any testing on elephant after such a long hesitation.

Unlike “Shooting an Elephant”, readers don’t get many opinions directly from narrator’s mental activities in “A Rose for Emily”. The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” is more observant. He doesn’t express his opinion directly, and instead, he just plainly describes what happen and the background information. So, readers can have very different understandings after reading. The criticism of racism in the story is mostly delivered to readers through ironies. Emily is such a wired woman, and people in town just let her go and let her do all the things that she wants. For example, when Emily refuses to pay the tax, people in town don’t do anything to enforce the law. Instead, they try many indirect methods, such as mailing the notice and having discussions with her, which all turns out to be ineffective. She is behaving so abnormal, people still don’t think she is abnormal. The therapist gives her the arsenic that she wants though she doesn’t tell the reason for buying it. When the smell from her house interferes people’s life in town, even Judge Steven doesn’t want to bother with Emily, and he even speaks for her even though they have no connection. In addition, many people’s other reactions towards Emily’s abnormal behavior are also ironic, showing how people is willing to endure Emily’s abnormal behavior just because she is a privileged southerner and her father.