Colonialism in the Literary Short Story Essay -- Literary Analysis

The view of heritage and tradition in the modern world has become an idea of importance to both the indigenous peoples and the descendants of the European colonists who attempted to Westernize the lands they discovered and the people in them. This idea has taken numerous forms in fresh years and not-so-recent years. One form it has been examined in is the literary short story. Thomas Kings One Good Story, That One and Chinua Achebes Dead manpowers Path use characters and conflict to make a statement about the loss of tradition and heritage in order to demonstrate the heart and soul of colonialism on indigenous people and their culture.The representatives of colonialism in these stories are white men in positions of superiority. In Kings story, they take the role of anthropologists, well-educated and well-dressed, magic spell in Achebes story, the white man is a supervisor in charge of overseeing everything the black main character does. The presence of these men, all of European descent, is a metaphor for the manner in which the original colonist be affirmd. The supervisors position of authority over the lesser black man is reflective of the pose that causes loss of heritage, while in Kings story the attitude the anthropologists display is that of the conqueror expecting to have their wants (to hear an old traditional story) met by those who have been conquered. They do not even deign to sit with the person they are asking this of. These three like to stand. Stand still. (pg... p...) These characters remain nameless and faceless, only know by their titles, throughout both stories. Perhaps this is because their true purpose in the story is not as a character, but as a figure for the attitudes of the colonists. If the white men ... ...ce if the lessons taught through these literary short stories are taken to heart and lived out in daily life. Works CitedAchebe, Chinua. Dead Mens Path. swindle Fiction Classic and Contemporary. Ed. Charles Bohner. Prentice Hall, 2002. 40-42. Print. Derry, Ken. Religion and (Mimetic) Violence in Canadian Native Literature. Literature & Theology An International Journal of Religion, Theory, and Culture 16.2 (2002) 201-219. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 8 Nov. 2010.Heinimann, David. Trickster Ethics, Richler and King Fiddling. English Studies in Canada 30.3 (2004) 39-56. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 8 Nov. 2010.King, Thomas. One Good Story, That One. One Good Story, That One. HarperCollins, 1993. 3-10. PrintLindfors, Bernth, ed. Conversations with Chinua Achebe. Jackson Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1997. Print.