Blog Post #2

Innate Dominance

Undoubtedly, race will remain as a controversial topic to many; however, it is clearly seen within literary analysis on how it can influence the trajectory of a story’s end.  The idea of the white race establishing dominance within rural communities maybe seen as predictable by this day and age but it is evident on how this expected social ranking was considered a normality in many instances. In William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily we see a muted and secluded character, Emily Grierson, that institutes a formal approach towards the rest of the townspeople from living under her father’s name of high-social class and tradition during the late 1800’s-early 1900’s. George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant also introduces a naive English man that is serving as a police officer in Burma during the 1920’s and struggles with internal conflict to kill an innocent elephant in order to represent his superiority as a white male that is only considered as a foreigner in that country. Both of these short stories unravel powerful stances that the white race holds in terms of dominance within developing communities.  

Although these literary texts hold similar ideals, they are definitely portrayed differently through the point of view of the narrator, their setting, and their plot. Faulkner sets A Rose for Emily  in Jefferson, Mississippi, which hosts a small town feel, during the late 1800’s- early 1900’s. This post civil war era setting helps the reader understand how the setting constituted for pretension among races. Emily Grierson’s background inherited her to a form of entitlement as the people of the town viewed her as a monument that represented “...a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation [to] the town” (Faulkner 37).  Unlike Orwell, Faulkner does not center the story’s plot around the idea of the white race superiority, he underlays it as a subtopic in the plot development. Orwell’s contains a theme of patriarchy central to the main character and his dilemma. The inner conflict within his identity and the setting is evidently intertwined when he states, “And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it.” (Faulkner 46). For the narrator, his white dominance within this rural community is a given. In his eyes, the Burmese directed hatred towards him as an individual because of his innate privilege to choose what he wants to do, in this case to shoot the elephant or not. On the other hand, Faulkner creates this character, Homer Barron, that serves as a representation for the lower social class and the people of color as a minority. Faulkner’s diction describes him as “The Negro man...a yankee...nigger....” (Faulkner 40). It is this social and race distinction that demonstrates the dominance that Emily asserts upon her feeble relationship with Homer by choosing to kill him in order for her to keep him in her possession against his will.

The English’s empowerment over the Burmese helps decipher the issue of imperialism impact on  them, just how Emily Grierson’s privileged background served as an excuse in order to avoid industrializing her lifestyle like the townspeople around her were.  It is this “innate” feeling of entitlement that gets automatically issued to the white race that undermines the respect for others and their ways of living. The patriarchal system that is establish within both social structures that are individually created by Faulkner and Orwell, which leads to a form of justification for the actions of each main character in the plot.