The Emperor

The passage that I read from The Emperor by Kapuscinski describes a reception the Emperor, Halie Selassie, held. Kapuscinski was invited as well as many other people from all the social classes. He describes the luxury and elegance of the place as well as the quantity of food there was. Kapuscinski went outside the palace, and saw the waiters walking towards a wall less building. He approached and noticed they were feeding beggars with the leftovers of the party. Then he went back in.

In this passage Kapuscinski presents the amazing, but real contrast of the world. While the rich are waisting money and giving themselves a luxurious life, the poor are starving to death. The worst of all is that everybody is aware of this, and no one does anything about it. Just like Kapuscinski did, he turned around and went back to the luxurious life, indifferent to the beggars' situation. I love how raw and real the author is when contrasting the two worlds, and how his description of the party makes you realize how the world of the rich is a bad as that one of the beggars, with people stealing their own emperor. Everyone is so fake, such a huge party just to impress the rest. Kapuscinski was able to say all this and more by just narrating the emperor's reception. He didn't have to include his feelings nor his thoughts to make the reader understand.

If this is rhetoric, then it is definitely logos because the author is using logic to convince us of the terrible world we are part of.