Human Violence

Paper Summary:

The paper analyzes the demonstration of human violence within two short stories. The paper describes the annual stoning of an individual from the village in "The Lottery" and the shooting of a wayward elephant spurned on by the crowd mentality in "Shooting an Elephant." The paper demonstrates the volatile desire in both works to witness and possibly take part in violence precipitated by the the need to seek money and/or power.

From the Paper:

"Each work demonstrates that power drives the violence, as in one case it is the desire of the crowd of Indians to witness the British police official, killing the elephant, in his perception, for the amusement of the spectacle, demonstrates the powerlessness of the crowd to control their lives, economically or politically. The crowd seems restless, of spirit, because of their abject poverty, and also the oppression of the Imperialist state they sought the meet of the animal and the spectacle, even though the weight of the killing of an elephant was greater than that of the "coolie" it had killed in the neighborhood."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ferguson, Niall. The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
• Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery first published in The New Yorker in 1948 at: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lotry.html
• May, Rollo. Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
• Nordstrom, Carolyn. Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
• Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant First published: New Writing. -- GB, London. -- autumn 1936. Reprinted:-- 'Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays'. -- 1950. -- 'The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage' -- 1956.-- 'Collected Essays'. -- 1961.-- 'The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell'. -- 1968. at: <http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph>

More papers on Human Violence:

• Case Study # 72606 : " A Case Study In The Causes Of Human Violence"
• Analytical Essay # 13988 : "Evil: Inside Human Violence & Cruelty" ( Roy Baumeister )"
• Term Paper # 5700 : "The Connection Between Animal Cruelty and Human Violence"

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