Explaining police brutality can be confusing, so instead of me being boring and explaining it as it is, I want you to picture this scenario: a video game. Now, this can be any game, but for time’s sake let’s make it Legend of Zelda, more specifically Breath of the Wild. Imagine Link, the “hero” that’s been asleep for the past 100 years, exploring the Great Plateau and looking for shrines. He comes across a camp full of bokoblins, with one guarding the camp atop a wooden platform. Link takes out a bow and kills the guard with a swiftly-placed arrow to the head. This, of course, causes panic from the other monsters, but it’s quickly replaced by rage as they attack Link for killing their friend. Link pulls out a weapon, a tree branch, and slaughters …show more content…
Link tries to fight back against the horde, but combined, bokoblins are too strong and Link is inevitably slaughtered. Police brutality is much like this scenario I’ve laid out for you. Link is the police officer, and the Great Plateau is a city, any city. Looking for shrines is symbolic of the officer doing his job of protecting the city. The bokoblins represent a minority group in the city. They did nothing to provoke Link, but Link still felt threatened by their presence and killed one of them. The group attacked out of rage and a feeling of injustice, but they too were slaughtered. Hours represent any amount of time passing, an hour, a day, maybe even a week, where other officers use their weapons, their tree branches and bows, to repeat this act of violence with other minority groups. The blood moon and the rebirth of the killed enemies is reminiscent of an entire community, the entire nation, even, coming together and fighting back against the unfair brutality, and Link’s death represents the eventual backing down and stopping of police brutality. Now, picture a television show where the main character is a friend to someone in their …show more content…
Now the boss can’t deny it any further, and eventually fires the librarian for the destruction of the books. However, the librarian wasn’t obligated by their former boss to pay for the damage and still gets off scot-free from responsibility for their deed, so nothing is done to resolve the issue, and now the library is short four books, all of which were loved by other people. Now, this may not seem like a big deal to the ex-employee, but even if these books are replaced by other books, whether they’re the same or brand-new titles that are even better reading material, it will never truly be the same for the readers of those beloved books, because they really aren’t the same. So, in reality, nothing changes or happens to make the issue better. Now, this mental picture I’ve asked you to paint is rather easy to explain. The library is a city in the world, whether it be Beijing, Brockton, or another city. The books represent the people in that city, each part of their own culture or group. The book that the librarian, who represents a police officer, chose is a single person of a minority