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The two stories, “ Shooting an elephant” by George Orwell and “ A rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, both talk about the racial discrimination in their societies.

“A Rose for Emily” takes place between the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s in a small town, which is located in the southern region of the United States. In the story, there is a huge gap between southern whites and other people. The lowest class in this story is African American. Through the whole story, Faulkner mentions lots of people’s names, such as the dead mayor Colonel Sartoris and the new mayor Judge Stevens, even if they just showed up one time during the whole story. However, the narrator use “Negro” to call all the African American in the story. Emily is the only one who call the black servant’s name in the story. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. The narrator is just a teller, he does not show any emotion in the whole event, but he continues to call the black servant “Negro servant” instead of his name, “Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket….” ,” THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in,…” This shows that African American are not respected by southern whites at that time, and from here we can see that most of white people in the town, they actually treat these African American as a property instead of a person. African American lacks of individuality in that society. Colonel Sartoris, the old mayor, "fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron". This policy only applies to Negro women, not white women. The idea that Negro women are lower than white women clearly exposes the racial discrimination in the southern region in USA at that time. What’s more, African American always show up in the story as servant and slave labor, they even don’t show up as residents in the town. This gives reader an information that African American lives a harder life than those white people.

“Shooting an Elephant” takes place in Moulmein in the 1930’s, a time when Britain ruled Burma. Orwell directly shows that racism between European and Colonized people in Burma. Orwell uses the first-person narration to tell the story and uses the narrator’s inner thoughts to show the racial discrimination at that time. The most striking example of racism in this story is the death of "a black Dravidian coolie". Personally, I believe it’s a right behavior to kill the elephant, since it has already killed an innocent person. Although the narrator kills the elephant, which is right in the law, his motivation does not come from the elephant’s murder of the Dravidian coolie. “afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” In his opinion, his pride as an European values more than a life of a "a black Dravidian coolie". Even though he shows his sympathy to the Burma people at the beginning part of the story, he is still one of the cruel colonists. Moreover, lots of European think that the value of the coolie’s life is not as important as an elephant. “ …the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie…”

Overall, both Orwell and Faulkner show us a society which has no equality. People are divided into many classes in the society, and the law can do nothing here but a servant to the upper class. People’s destiny is decided by their skin color, by where they born. Even though this society has already been a history, we still need to warn ourselves to value our today’s equal life. Everyone is born to be equal.