Shooting An Elephant

The first portion of Orwell’s piece is filled with his hatred for imperialism and the “evil-spirited little beasts” (para. 2) that torment him. Orwell hated the imperialism in Burma and “those who tried to make [his] job impossible” (para. 2). You can see his true anger and hatred when he uses diction like “petty”, “sneering”, “wretched”, “intolerable”, and “rage” (para. 1,2) when he’s describing some of his encounters in Burma. Most of all, Orwell just wanted to be liked and respected. He is tired of being punished for the actions of the British empire. He states that like “every white man,.. in the East” (para. 7) he was just living “one long struggle [to] not be laughed at” (para. 7). Orwell’s change in tone forces a change in the reader’s perception of the situation. When he shifts from enraged hatred and hostility towards the eastern world to a desperate want to be liked by the burmans, the reader also has a shift. They go from not only despising imperialism but

2. In paragraphs 3-5 Orwell is shown as searching for the elephant and discovering all the damage that the elephant has caused while on its rampage, and we see orwell eventually “sent an orderly to a friends house to borrow an elephant rifle”(page 2). After he receives this gun he is shown as socially pressured because all the burmese people expect him to “shoot the elephant” (page 3), but he doesn’t want to shoot the elephant himself. These details intensify the conflict because he originally got the rifle to defend himself, but now since all the burmese people already expect him to shoot the elephant he can’t really back down since he would be laughed at and mocked if he did. Orwell has to decide

Orwell portrays the vengeful feelings of the Burmese people, the colonized, towards British People, the conqueror. As he has worked as a British officer in Burma, he knows how the natives feel about the British. Of course, it was obvious that the Burmese did not welcome any kind of British presence, including Orwell himself. The Occidentals were extremely mistreated, such as being jeered, and the narrator understood that anti-European feeling was very “bitter” (Orwell, 313). He needed to deal adequately with the native society, even though he was a target of bullying. For instance, he used to get ripped up on the football field, ignored by the referee and mocked by the crowd (Orwell, 313). Hence, he is a victim of the natives’ behavior. Not only is he the target of the native’s behavior, but he is also the victim of the imperial system.

He repeats over and again that he did not want to shoot the elephant. He confesses, “It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.” Orwell gives emotional reasons for being against the idea of shooting the animal and not rational. He generalizes all elephants to have a “preoccupied grandmotherly air” and compares the elephant to a cow. The writer uses the simile, “They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick.” to explain the pressure he had from the crowd watching him. Orwell remarks that regardless of his decision to shoot the elephant, he cannot change the thinking of the public about him. Orwell was moved by the hefty crowd that followed him. He was left with no choice other than to shoot the elephant because that was what the crowd expected of him and this scene signifies the failure of imperialism which is the writer’s overall theme. The sentence, “I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.” helps explain to the reader the real failure of imperialism. Orwell insists that although the white man in the East has power which is symbolized by the rifle, he is still not allowed to make use of it in accordance with his will. He is classifying imperialism as a hollow and futile way of governance. The Englishmen

“Shooting an Elephant” is a short anecdote written by George Orwell. The story depicts a young man, Orwell, who has to decide whether to bend the rules for his superiors or to follow his own path. George Orwell works as the sub-divisional police officer of Moulmein, a town in the British colony of Burma. He, along with the rest of the English military are disrespected by the Burmese due to the English invading their territory and taking over. Over time, Orwell, the narrator, has already begun to question the presence of the British in the Far East. He states, theoretically and secretly, he was “all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British.” Orwell describes himself as “young and ill-educated,” bitterly hating his job. Orwell uses powerful imagery and diction to convey a depressing and sadistic tone to the story. At the end of the story, he faces a dilemma: to kill the elephant or not.

The elephant, in this case, represent imperialism. Orwell, being in the middle of imperialism and the Burmese people, did not want to destroy imperialism in the first place even though he does not like the way it treated the innocent Burmese people. However, seeing the elephant destroying Burmese’s homes and lives, he finally realized what imperialism had done to the people of Burma. The Indian man who died represent the fact that Burmese people are weak against the British; they are poor and have neither strength nor “the gut to raise a riot” (1) against imperialism regardless of how much they hated it. Even though he did not kill imperialism like the way he did to the elephant, he believes that it will be destroy one day for the evil thing that they had done. As illustrated by Orwell,

However, any power given to him through the imperialistic setting is lost, because Orwell exists as a part of a minority in Burma. With this dilemma, Orwell notices the difficulties that come with an authoritative figure in a foreign country as, “[Orwell] was hated by a large number of people- the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.” (144) Due to this hatred, Orwell finds his job to impose order futile because the Burmese people seem to have a tighter grasp on Orwell than Orwell himself. The Burmans appear to be enforcing their power over Orwell through their majority and he experiences this when, “A nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way.” (144) These acts that the Burmans commit show that power appears to exist in the hands of the Burmese majority rather than Orwell. By placing a colonist within a colony, the writer establishes the feeling that power should lie in the hand of the colonist. However, this concept is shattered because Orwell possesses no power though the colonial setting because of the fact that the Burmese appear to be in control. The lack of power present in the surroundings further enforces the fact that true power cannot come from one’s conquest or authority but only from within.

George Orwell began the essay with his perspective on British domination. He stated that it is evil and alongside of that it is oppressive. He felt hatred and guilt toward himself and the Burmese people. The people of Burma did not feel threatened because the narrator of the story had killed the elephant. The Burmese people have lost their dignity and integrity while trying to fight off the British imperialism. Orwell uses allegories to describe his experience of the British imperialism and he had his own view of the matter of slaying the elephant. He successfully used ethos, pathos, and logos by attracting the audience to read his story. He had to make a scene in the story to make the people of Burma feel the same emotion. The elephant was the one reason why it makes this story emotional. He used logos to show that he can kill the elephant even if he does not want to so that it does not make him look fool.

and disrupting the little bit of peace that they have. So in that instant he

The glorious days of the imperial giants have passed, marking the death of the infamous and grandiose era of imperialism. George Orwell's essay, Shooting an Elephant, deals with the evils of imperialism. The unjust shooting of an elephant in Orwell's story is the central focus from which Orwell builds his argument through the two dominant characters, the elephant and its executioner. The British officer, the executioner, acts as a symbol of the imperial country, while the elephant symbolizes the victim of imperialism. Together, the solider and the elephant turns this tragic anecdote into an attack on the institution of imperialism.

In the essay ?Shooting an Elephant? by George Orwell, the author uses metaphors to represent his feelings on imperialism, the internal conflict between his personal morals, and his duty to his country. Orwell demonstrates his perspectives and feelings about imperialism.and its effects on his duty to the white man?s reputation. He seemingly blends his opinions and subjects into one, making the style of this essay generally very simple but also keeps it strong enough to merit numerous interpretations. Orwell expresses his conflicting views regarding imperialism throughout the essay by using three examples of oppression and by deliberatly using his introspection on

He finds the elephant to be more important than the people because he finds a similarity with the elephant. He is very similar to the elephant because the narrator is compelled to do a job that he hates on impulse, and he watches death and causes a lot of agony in the Burmese people’s live. This is related to how the elephant went on rage and tried to wipe out any of the Burmese people who got in its path. He uses the phrase “All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirted little beast who tried to make my job impossible” (Orwell 2). As Orwell finds the value of the elephant, he finds no value in the people; the elephant and him share the interest that they are hard workers and cannot handle what they have to do in

The language that was used to express how George Orwell was feeling leading up to him killing the elephant shows how he felt the situation should of been handled compared to how he actually handled it. “ I had no intention of shooting the elephant”(Orwell 112) in this phrasing Orwell is clearly saying before

Through the essay, with the use of particular emotional words and sentences, the audience can perceive Orwell’s feelings and emotions, by the memorable amount of pathos over his essay. Orwell goes on describing the cruel reality the Burmese people lived in by describing, with the use of dramatic and lively words, the terrible situations, and consequences of Imperialism. Giving more reasons for his logos, Orwell at the same time uses pathos to emotionally involve

Orwell employs symbolism as a major literary technique, aiding our understanding of his stance against colonialism and our understanding of the setting. From the start, it is clear that he represents the modern, the western industrial English, at complete odds with the rural and primitive Burmese. It is believed that the focal symbolic point would be the narrators stand against the elephant. In the paragraph in which the narrator fires at the elephant, it is seen as docile, not bothering anyone anymore and having only made a sporadic wrong. The narrator then fires at the quite calm elephant once, but it does not fall and so, while it is still weak, he fires two more shots, bringing the magnificent creature down. Burma (The country in which the story is situated) has a long history of wars with the British Empire before finally giving in to Colonialism; three wars to be exact. It can be seen in the history books that Burma only wronged the British in a minor way and in fact was not directly bothering the British Raj and much like the narrator, it