Quote: "It has been shown that in Hawaii there is an alien element composed of men of energy and determination, well able to carry through what they undertake, but not scrupulous respecting their methods."
Queen Liliuokalani is one of the most intelligent women writers I've had the pleasure of reading. She is articulate, enlightened and worldly, making her writing that which makes the reader think and read twice to understand her meaning. I choose this quote because it is like that. She first says that there is an "alien element composed of men or energy and determination" which with that language, by calling them an "alien element" it degrades the way she sees some of her people as a force of nature, not human. In this way they cannot be controlled because they are driven by their energy and determination. During the time of her decline in power and overthrow, men from the United States saw the riches that Hawaii had to offer the rest of the world, like the perfect soil for pineapples (considered exotic at the time) and sugar cane. Men like Bob Dole were money hungry men with a lot of energy and determination to make something out of the islands of Hawaii, but did not care who they stepped on to get what they wanted.
That is where the second part of the quote I chose comes in, where she writes that they are not "scrupulous respecting their methods." Scrupulous can mean a few different things, but has an overall negative connotation behind it. She means that they fastidious or thorough when carrying out their methods. There are things they forget or choose to ignore. I feel that her word choice of "scrupulous" is key because it means "thorough or careful" but the sentence has so much more power and a negative unspoken jab at the men she talks about when she uses the word "scrupulous." The way she words many of her sentences in her writings have a lot of literary power behind them.
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