We all face the pressures of expectations and stereotypes of society on a daily basis. Regardless of economic status or wage, they struggle to find their place, amongst the product of negative myths placed on them or being expected to lived up to and express their social status through action. Some men or women, not willing to resist the pressure to conform, give up their identity to others. In the cases of Cofer’s “The Myth of The Latin-American Woman,” and Orwell’s “Shooting An Elephant”, the experience of two people’s response is discussed. Who they are and what society expects of them shapes who they are in response. Cofer was a Puerto-Rican woman raised in New Jersey during the sixties. She grew up in a family still influenced by the culture of her island, mentioning the importance of virtue and modesty, which she equates to family honor. However, she is conflicted with the pressure to conform by those around her. Her “tight skirts and jingling bracelets”[Cofer,114] are viewed as a way to attract sexual attention. Women of her culture are objectified and misinterpreted, then become products of pleasure and entertainment. She wishes to master English so she can “acquire many mechanisms for dealing with the anger I experience”[Cofer, 117]. She discusses how the media also encourages the mediocrity of her people. She describes a doctor who “still shakes his head in puzzled amazement at all the ‘big words’ she uses”[Cofer, 118]. At her first public poetry reading in Miami, an older woman mistook her for a waitress. Cofer closes with a sense of pride and appreciation, stating, “Yet I am one of the lucky ones. My parents made it possible for me to acquire a stronger footing in the mainstream culture by giving me the chance at an education. And books and art have saved me from the harsher forms of ethnic and racial prejudice that many of my Hispanic companeras have had to endure”[Cofer,119]. In “Sho