Blog post #2-Topic #1-Mingyu Zhang

Powerful forces tend to show their superiority in every aspect. However, depending on different geographic distributions and historic backgrounds, the display and influence of power can be very different. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, the narrator tells a story about how Emily retreats from social life in a small southern town in America, and how people pity yet also despise her. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, a British police officer unwilling shoot an elephant under the pressure from Burmese people. Both these stories are about the power of authority and how it influences people living under the rule and social structure, but with different attitudes and positions.

The dictions and tones used by the two authors are quite different. Faulkner’s story sounds isolated and closed, with a gothic atmosphere. For example, the narrator describes the funeral at the beginning, and how her house is a “stubborn and coquettish decay”. Throughout the story, the narrator tries to adapt a neutral attitude towards Emily, but readers inevitably feel that Emily is isolated in the town, and people don’t care about her although they pretend the opposite. Contrastingly, in Orwell’s story, the police officer immediately talks about how he hates Burmese who always try to insult him in every possible way. In the meantime, he also expresses contradictory thinking to colonialism and imperialism. The difference between the two stories in terms of language using and tone indicates different subconscious attitudes toward power dynamics. White people in the southern town display superiority by ignoring what happened pre-civil war, and they think what happens to Emily now is her own misdeeds. In contrast, the Englishmen working in Burma can’t control how they show power because their conflicting minds are driven by the hatred of “bad” Burmese and hesitation towards colonialism.

Another difference of power dynamics is that in “A Rose for Emily”, Southern white people is the majority while in “Shooting an Elephant”, the narrator represents superiority with a disadvantage because he is the minority in Burma. One of the most significant conflicts in Orwell’s story happens when the narrator is surrounded by hundreds of Burmese, waiting for him to kill the elephant when he doesn’t want to. Although the narrator represents the colonizers, who are supposed to be more decisive and in a positive position when it comes to conflicts, he acts counter to reasonable actions and kills the elephant. However, people in the Southern town look more like a union against Emily, and they always approach her as a group of people, asking her to tidy the house and pay taxes. Approaching from on a historical point of view, although the British Empire, have colonies all over the world, it is very hard to establish an absolute authority in local areas, where cultural and racial differences make the colonizers less powerful than they would have imagined to be. The situation in America is totally different. Before the Civil War, white people have already lived in the country for a very long time, and thus they have advantages in numbers and culture as well. More importantly, it also results in people not realizing racism when it does exist.

Different historical backgrounds affect power dynamics. Unbalanced social status kills Emily, while it forces the English police officer to act unwillingly. In both cases, authorities want to establish order as they wish, but the results are quite different.