My favorite sentence in Hawaii’s Story is, “Shakespeare has said it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.” This quote reminded me of the picture of McKinley washing the Philippine baby and the concept of imperialism that we talked about in class on Tuesday. America is this large, dominating, super power and they were constantly trying to get people and nations to change their ways and cultures so that they would become American like. Instead of trying to use American influence, technology, and knowledge as power and use it as an opportunity to help educate these Hawaiians, the American government instead forced them to change their way of life and government, thus creating this “tyrannous” image to the native Hawaiians.
Excellent analysis!
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