Politics
Now that you have examined a number of texts that focus on politics, explore one dimension of this topic by synthesizing your own ideas and the readings. You might want to do more research or use readings from other classes as you discuss and prepare for the following projects.
When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don’t trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”
His importance to the century just past, and therefore his status as a figure in history as well as literature, derives from the extraordinary salience of the subjects he “took on,” and stayed with, and never abandoned. As a consequence, we commonly use the term “Orwellian” in one of two ways. To describe a state of affairs as “Orwellian” is to imply crushing tyranny and fear and conformism. To describe a piece of writing as “Orwellian” is to recognize that human resistance to these terrors is unquenchable.
Write an essay in which you apply Hitchens’s second definition of Orwellian to “Shooting an Elephant” and to at least two other texts in this chapter.
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. —Hannah Arendt
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. —John F. Kennedy
In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. —George Orwell
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. —Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. —Edmund Burke
Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. —Abigail Adams
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. —John Ruskin
If we are to survive, we are to have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by communities. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself. —Arthur Schlesinger Jr.