Blog Post #2 A Historical Analysis of "A Rose for Emily" and "Shooting an Elephant"

In the short story “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner describes the goings on in a small town in the Southern United States. Although the plot centers around an old woman named Emily, the relationship between the black and white people in the town is dreadful. Specifically, the whites in the town dominate the blacks in almost every conceivable way. In similar fashion, George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” relates a corresponding dynamic between the occupying British and the locals in a small town in Burma. The rapport between the dominating and the dominated in both short stories, though disappointing by today’s standards, was historically accurate for the time period portrayed.

“A Rose for Emily” is set a short, unspecified amount of time after 1894, a time in which race relations in the United States were subpar, to say the least. The Civil War ended in 1865 and there were efforts to ensure the integration of blacks into southern life. However, in 1877 “the federal government had withdrawn its forces from the South, prompting decades of reaction characterized by [...] national repression” (workers.org). Due to the timing, “A Rose for Emily” describes a time period where such national repression had been taking place long enough for such atrocities to be normalized again. For example, the narrator, recounting the arrival of a newcomer named Homer, mentioned that “[t]he little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks” (Faulkner, 40). The word “nigger” is obviously an astonishingly offensive word to refer to a black person, yet the narrator uses such phraseology as if it were ordinary and continues with the story. Additionally, the narrator refers to every white person in the town by their first name. However, each mention of a black servant who features prominently in the story is referred to only as “the Negro.” It is not clear whether this is because no one cared enough to know his name or whether the lack of a name was due to disrespect based on the color of his skin. The important aspect is that the black man is treated differently than the white people of the town, and unfortunately, this is exactly how life was in the southern United States because the Civil War and Civil Rights movement left black people “still not fully liberated” (workers.org).

The British government in India, also known as the British Raj, ruled “by coercion and force” and “in true British tradition, they also chose to elaborate sophisticated and intellectual arguments to justify and explain their rule” (bbc.co.uk/history). Both of aspects of British control in India are shown in Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant.” For instance, the narrator describes the British Raj as “an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples” (Orwell, 44). Although these are strong words, they are historically accurate. The British did rule in harsh manner. However, as previously stated, the British attempted to condone their role in the domination of India. The narrator also seems to make such an argument. For example, after he has shot the elephant, he stated that “afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant” (Orwell, 48). This statement by the narrator alludes to the British Raj. They are stepping in to save the native people and are “in the right” for doing so. Although the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “Shooting an Elephant” take place in two different time periods and on two different continents, both relay a relationship between a dominating and dominated people that is historically accurate and sheds light on such relations in society.