Colonization In Stephen Bonnycastle's In Search For Authority

As empires expand, they colonize other "less superior" countries, nations or cultures in efforts to add to their territory. When this expansion occurs and colonization of the population inhabiting the area begins, the colonizers forget that the population of the area are indeed human. Colonizers neglect the ideals, morals and culture of native people and force the empire's ideals, morals and culture upon them. The colonized feels helpless as they are stripped of everything their culture, and forced to worship new ideals as their own. Bonnycastle states that, "The aim of the colonizers was not only to dominate, but to eliminate everything in the lives of the natives that might have given them a sense of identity or dignity" (229). Colonizes dehumanized populations of people just to reap for their own benefit. In the eyes of an empire, this colonization was doing good, “It was a project energized in part by high ideals: the desire to bring the benefits of European science, technology, and medicine to millions of people leading lives that were viewed (by the

This idea shines through postcolonial and multicultural literature, in these short stories, poems and essays: Stephen Bonnycastle's In Search For Authority, The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, Black Man's Burden, White Man's Burden, and Caesar and Cleopatra one can specifically envision the oppression felt by the colonized, the hatred felt for the colonizers, and surprisingly, even the sympathy felt for the colonizers. Many, if not all people who a colonized feel oppressed in some way, shape or form. Most often they feel oppressed when their own culture is pushed aside and a new and, in most cases very different, culture is pushed upon them. This is an extremely prominent them throughout postcolonial and multicultural literature. In the second chapter of The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, an autobiography, the reader can easily notice