A Comparison Of Power In Beloved, And Shooting An Elephant

There are several ideas that have been prevalent in the texts we have analyzed this year. The three texts 1984, Beloved, and Shooting an Elephant were the most connected. What brought these stories together were the endemic themes of lust for power and unempathetic control. The reigning parties in these texts all demonstrate an overindulgent need for ultimate power. Being able to place restrictions on every aspect of the oppressed peoples’ lives is what motivates the people in positions of power. The abstract need for ultimate power causes the unempathetic control because it perpetuates the idea that when ultimate power is achieved, the dominating faction is able to freely commit transgressions against the suppressed. In Beloved, one can
These escapes would often result in the Schoolteacher and his peers taking great measures to hunt the slaves down. Escapes were met by an almost certain capture as shown by instances such as, “And when the schoolteacher found us and came busting in here with the law and a shotgun-” (25, Beloved). Though slaves were worth money to Schoolteacher, the capture of these slaves were motivated by reasons that were not only economical. One’s ultimate power is questioned if something as unintelligent as a slave escapes. The inevitable chase of these escaped slaves is an instance in where the oppressed have power over the controlled. The slaves do not realize that the schoolteacher pursues them so aggressively for reasons other than the desire of his property back. If a slave escapes, they’re damaging the social idea that white man has complete power and control over the slave. This drives posses to band together, like when “The four horsemen came--schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff--the house on Bluestone Road was so quiet they thought they were too late” (85, Beloved). If one slave escapes, a blow is dealt to the social hierarchy. Escapes are not only physical, they represent that the slaves are independently thinking, which defines them as the people that white masters didn’t believe they were. This suppression of ideas is the also the motivating force in 1984, where the party
The Schoolteacher treated slaves as experimental subjects, and enacted acts of savagery on them that one can barely imagine. The Party used manipulation, lies, and eventual torture to push the agenda of their group. Even Orwell, despite his hate of imperialism, represented an empire that brutally ruled Burma for over 100 years. However, though the methods of punishment, or control, may have been different, the dependency of the ruling parties on the ruled was similar. Regardless of the nature of the ruling parties, it becomes evident in the stories that the elite heavily depended on the people they controlled, and were so scared of losing their control that they would resort to extreme methods to retain their power. A prolific statement from Orwell is “When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys” (Shooting an Elephant, 2). Orwell, a pawn of the British empire at the time, acknowledges that when people in control go too far, they are the ones that end up controlled. In each of the stories, the reigning party had turned tyrant. Consequently, each party unknowingly chose to vanquish their freedom, and let their quest for ultimate power lead to the victims of this power having