Orientalism Edward Said Analysis

In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said sheds light on an abstract theory called Orientalism. Said starts out with an introduction in which he gives some very definite examples of what Orientalism is not. Orientalism is not about westerns trying to hinder people of the east. It is also not solely about politics, as the theory is much more complicated than that. Finally, It is giant bundle of books depicting the Orient. Orientalism is then explained as the concept that western society views the world as two separate and unequal parts, the Orient (the East) and the Occident (the West), and that the east needs the west to dominate it so that the east can become better.
The book then goes on to discuss that this is not a new topic, in fact,

Due to Balfour’s position in the British government and perceived knowledge of the eastern cultures, he believed he was entitled to make assumptions about Europe, Egypt, the Occident and the Orient as a whole. What made Egypt such an eye-opening example was that it verified, exaggerated and showed the negative connotations that the West has of the East. In 1907, Evelyn Baring the 1st Earl of Cromer from England was in charge of Egypt, and he was oppressive. Also in 1907, Balfour gave Cromer his approval, and this helped Cromer to achieve a sizable retirement sum of fifty thousand pounds for his work in Egypt. Balfour claims that if Cromer had not been in Egypt, it would be worse off than it is

The majority of my summary is explaining what Orientalism is and what its principles are. This takes up the bulk of my summary because it is the most important part of Said’s writing to understand. If one does not fully understand what Orientalism is, then they will not even be able to come close to grasping the true meaning and essence of the work. Another important aspect I decided to include in the summary was both Balfour’s and Cromer’s ideas. These two perspectives give us a firsthand example of someone whom both believed in Orientalism and who spread it to many who would take their word as fact. Said also used many of their thoughts to back up his claims, so it is necessary to include them in the summary to help provide a sense of what the structure of Said’s writing is like as well as what sources he used. I chose to leave out a lot of ideas from the last pages of the text. I found that these pages provided less overarching concepts and less main ideas. The last pages tended to delve more deeply into real life examples, and one does not need them to understand the major keys to Orientalism. The paragraph I chose to paraphrase was fairly concise already, so I included almost every aspect of it. Each sentence in the real text needed to be conveyed, which is necessary because each idea builds upon the last one. If I were to leave something out, it would seem incomplete