Short Story 'Power Versus Love'
Power Versus Love
All the responsibility on whether to live or not was resting on her shoulders.
“ Nigger! What you doing over there, huh?”, shouted the white old man from across the street. “Just walking to the shops, sir”, Harriet replied back. He teased her, “You’d be lucky if you got anything from the shops” and he walked away. He was right, but not the way he thought.
Harriet walked along the gravel roads, through the foreign city in hope that she would land herself a job. It had been a few days since her master passed away so she was in desperate need to earn some money to feed her four children back home. Harriet’s definition of home was a piece of cloth held between two trees with a rope, far from town. If she or her family were to be seen in their handmade tent, they’d be executed. It was a cruel world. It was 1880 and racial
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I have explored this matter by following the steps of a single African American mother who is living in the city of Columbus. Through the verbal and physical actions of both races in America, the reader can identify how an unbalanced amount of power and love results in cruelty towards one race.
This story is based off a segment from Martin Luther King’s speech which was delivered in 1967 at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The segment I used was “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic.” I was inspired to use this quote as it perfectly sums up the balance that should present within society for all individuals to be accepted despite differences in personality or looks. Martin Luther King raises awareness of the required balance of love and power by explaining that they aren’t polar opposites. Equal inputs of love and power is what enables a leader to become great. Love is what drives positive
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283 Words | 2 PagesFurthermore, “Harriet moved in front of the doorway, stood there, blocking it.” This shows how brave Harriet was to stand up to a dangerous overseer whose intention was most likely only to hurt her. In addition to that, “...for no man should take me
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