I have recently read a short story "
Emperor''s New
Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen. It''s about an emperor, whose
vanity
is used by two scoundrels to make him believe, they can produce the most
beatiful
clothes of fabric, which is only visible to intelligent and competent
people. Everyone, including
emperor, pretends to see this fabric, until the
young child says, that it really doesn''t exist. Then, everyone admits, that
he''s right. The story deals with quite a few themes, and one of them is the
fact, that people pretended to see the fabric.
When two scoundrels "show" the fabric to
emperor, of course he doesn''t see it. However, he doesn''t want to admit it,
because he believes, that it is beacause of his ignorance, and he doesn''t want
to be considered as a stupid. He pretends to see it, which makes his minister
scared of telling him, that they see it neither. In result, no one sees the
fabric, but everyone tries to not show it. Also in real life, we often don''t
want to admit, for example our boss, that we aren''t able to do something,
because we fear, that we can loose our job.
Also, when emperor organises procession to show his
new suit to the people, no one can see it. Not only no one admits it, but many
seem to believe, that the clothes exist. Emperor, is a kind of authority for
them, and they think, that if he sees that (it seems to be like that), it is
real. People have many, not always reliable, authorities, and tend to believe
them, without thinking and even suspecting, that they are, more or less, often,
wrong. It occured in both, Hans Christian Andersen''s and modern society.
There''s also another thing, that makes people not
say, what they think. During emperor''s procession, no one admits, that he
doesn''t see the clothes, because no one wants to be considered by his
acquintances and neighbours - by society, as a stupid. Nowadays we also often
follow, more or less conciously, what society dictates us. We follow trends and
fashions. We all wear jeans, drink cola and have ipods and teenagers often
smoke, because their friends do. It shows, how easily influenced we are.
Hans Christian Andersen, through "Emperor''s New
Clothes", shows, that we are very
submissive to people, who have some kind of power. No matter if this is our our
boss, some kind of authority or even the whole society, we very often yield to
them.