Role Of Decision-Making In Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot

The human mind works in mysterious ways. So many factors contribute to the intricate process of decision-making. Some people, like John Ruskin, might argue that “What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.” So many other things that help steer people in one direction or another. “What we think, or what we know, or what we believe...” is such a vital part of living and a driving force that inspires change.
Knowledge is an essential foundation for inspiring movement of change. In Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot, for instance, Vowell was conflicted about how she felt toward the American flag and all it stood for. She was baffled as to why she would have …show more content…
In On Seeing England for the First Time by Jamaica Kincaid, for instance, it was brought up that the people of Antigua were at a large disadvantage. She knew that her, in her words, her “...head full of personal opinions… could not have public, [her] public, approval” (Kincaid, Paragraph 16). She knew how powerless her people were. Because she could so clearly remember how unimportant she and her people were made to feel, she hated England, what it stood for, and who lived in it. She didn’t hate England because someone else told her to, she had plenty of time to think about it, and she made the decision on her own. She decided that she did not want to be anything like them. She decided that she hated them. She was given enough to make that connection on her own. Like Kincaid, Sarah Vowell in The Partly Cloudy Patriot expressed her befuddlement for how someone could be made to feel so unneeded. She pondered, as she said, “...the rationale for outlawing all music all the time...” (Vowell, Paragraph 14). She could not logically make a connection that would lead to why anyone in their right mind would outlaw music. It just didn’t make sense. Because of this, she expressed her outrage in writing. She didn’t have to write about that, but she thought it was important enough that she could not pass on the opportunity. George Orwell in Shooting an Elephant was just as conflicted. As he said, all he knew was that he was “...stuck between [his] hatred of the empire [he] served and [his] rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make [his] job impossible” (Orwell, Paragraph 2). He did not have to express his anger to the public, but, having so much time to think about how angry this made him, he could not pass up on the