Forbidden City Bystander

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Forbidden City Final Essay What is oppression? Oppression is where members of one group are exploited, or taken advantage of, and have no power while the members of another group are granted privileges. These two groups are the victims and oppressors. Aside from these two groups, there are upstanders, who stand up for the victims against the oppressor, and the bystanders, who witness oppression and do nothing because they are either scared, don’t know what to do, waiting for others to speak first, or afraid that their own group would exclude them. Bystanders, in result, indirectly tell oppressors that it’s right to keep oppressing. In the book Forbidden City, author William Bell writes of each character and their actions that place them into …show more content…

In many cases, the bystander will become an upstander. The poem “First They Came For” by Martin Niemoller is an autobiographical poem relating to WWII. This poem shows how even bystanders will most likely receive the same fate as the victims. When people around the author were taken by the Nazis to concentration camps, he didn’t speak up for them because he wasn’t under any of those categories. In the end, he, too was taken by the Nazis and there wasn’t anyone left to speak up for him. In the poem “The Hangman” by Maurice Odgen, the narrator remains a bystander as all the people in the town are hanged by the oppressor, the Hangman, because the narrator trusted him. For example, one quote stated “I did no more than you let me do”. This quote shows how bystanders unintentionally support the oppressor in showing them that what they do is correct. Also, in Forbidden City, Lao Xu, Alex’s Chinese friend, was a bystander because he trusted the oppressors, the PLA. Both Lao Xu and the narrator from “The Hangman” trusted the oppressors until they noticed something was wrong. Unfortunately, they were both murdered, being bystanders, but were still taught an important lesson: just because you don’t take a side doesn’t mean that you won’t be harmed. In conclusion, it is clear that both poems are a warning to all readers that in the end, all bystanders will face the same fate as the victims, and also helped lead the oppressor to

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