Bystanders Respond To Oppression In The Pigeon, By William Bell

There are four roles in an oppressed society: oppressor, upstander, bystander, and the victim. The oppressors are people who mess with the minds of others through dominant messages, those “others” are the victims. There are two ways that people respond to systems of oppression, by either being a bystander or an upstander. In Forbidden City by William Bell, classism has corrupted the minds of the government leading them to think that they are better than the students. Alex in Forbidden City was a bystander that later transformed into an upstander. The poem “The Hangman” shows what happens to bystanders if they don’t do anything, it gives evidence to show how bystanders respond to oppression. The film “The Pigeon” shows how upstanders act when

Bystanders are people who see oppression, but they don’t do anything to stop it.“The Hangman” by Maurice Ogden shows how bystanders affect an oppressed society and what they do during oppression. The narrator in “The Hangman” is a bystander that watches as his happy town slowly diminishes until he is the last one alive because he did nothing. In Forbidden City Alex is a bystander in the beginning because he started recording the PLA, but it was for Lao Xu and because he was his father's son (Bell, 118). He heard the shooting but he did nothing to attempt to stop it or anything else. Both Alex and the narrator did nothing in the the face of danger and tried to blend in with the rest. In “The Hangman” the narrator is told at the end by the hangman, “And where are the others that might have stood side by your side in the common good” (Ogden). This quote says that if all of the citizens ganged up on him he would have been able to throw him out of their town. In Forbidden City if Alex converted to an upstander earlier might have had an easier chance to smuggle the tapes and less students would have died. If both Alex and the narrator did something more, there would have been a better outcome in the