Conflict In The Guest, Daru And Orwell's Values

George Orwell describes to us in “Shooting an elephant” the struggle that his character faces when to win the mobs approval and respect when he shoots down an innocent animal and sacrifices what he believes to be right. Orwell is a police officer in Moulmein, during the period of the British occupation of Burma. An escaped elephant gives him the opportunity to prove himself in front of his people and to be able to become a “somebody” on the social

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

Staring down a gun barrel at one of the largest and most majestic animals can often times be extremely intimidating. One might be temped to do something they are normally uncomfortable with when an angry crowd is right behind you watching your every move. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell finds himself in the same situation having to make a drastic decision that normally he would not do. In Orwell’s essay, he is trying to inform his audience about the negative ways in which British Imperialism has on people involved.

“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.

Upon seeing the rifle, a huge crowd started to follow him. He had no intention to kill the elephant. However, the crowd was expecting him to shoot it. They did not want to kill it because it had destroyed the bazaar, but rather to enjoy the fun and to get the elephant meat. The crowd’s expectation leaves Orwell no choice but to shoot the elephant. He points out that he had to shoot it to “impress the ‘natives’” (7). If he had not done it, the crowd would have laugh at him, and it would hurt his pride as a white man living in the East. In the end, he decided to trigger the gun and shot the elephant.

sense that he did not have ill-intent to kill the elephant. When Orwell says, ?

In the article "Shooting an Elephants" by George Orwell the author's story is very captivating and descriptive. “I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” He does not hold back the details as if he remembers them. Orwell originally did not want to shoot the elephant but feared what his peers would say, his peers being the thousand yellow faces that stood behind him if he didn't complete his job. Unfortunately, he was not in fear of his life but his duty and job called for him to against his morals and shoots the elephant. The locals had it out for him anyways, not killing elephant would have added fire to the flame of the dislike they would have for the policeman. The Burmese people play a huge role, badgering

Philosophical issues have been debated for centuries. One of the more recent dilemmas in philosophy is the “Trolley problem” (Foot). The basic premise is, a runaway train going straight will kill five people, if it is diverted, it will kill one person, which do you choose? George “Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant” (Orwell 407) and Elie Wiesel’s “The Perils of Indifference: Lessons Learned from a Violent Century” (Wiesel 289) both examine the effect of human actions. Wiesel’s speech is the more persuasive due to the emotional element as well his plainly stated view upon indifference, whereas Orwell’s narrative leaves the reader questioning his action.

The first and primary reason for George Orwell shooting the elephant is simply Orwell being afraid. He was originally not intending to shoot the elephant; he merely brought the rifle for his own protection. “I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder

Orwell next faces the moral dilemma of whether or not to shoot the elephant. At first, it is clear that he does not feel the internal urge to shoot the elephant: "It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him" (Orwell.525). However, Orwell's virtue becomes dwarfed as the Burmese's "two thousand wills [press him] forward"(524) to kill the elephant. At this point there is an obvious role reversal as the Burmese begin to strongly influence Orwells decisions. Because he constantly dwells on what the crowd will think of him he shoots the elephant. Thus submitting to the will of the people and committing the immoral deed of abandoning ones own conscious because of the pressure of others.

Killing animals is one of the most selfish things you could possibly do. It requires crazy mentality, and awful characteristics. Orwell is a cheerless policeman who lives in mental solitude. He is unattended with his thinking since he can not share his idea that “imperialism was an evil thing” with his fellow citizens. Orwell sees the British rule as “an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down...upon the will of prostrate peoples” because he is an eyewitness of the cruel confinement and beatings that they use to invoke their force. Throughout the story, an innocent chain of events makes Orwell choose between two unsatisfactory options. When he goes to check a report that a tame elephant that had gone “must” has broken loose, Orwell takes a medium caliber rifle which is “much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem.” When he finds out a coolie had been killed by the elephant, Orwell trades his rifle for a bigger gun just for self-defense. This ends up being a crucial mistake because now the Burmese think, now that he has an elephant gun, he has decided to kill the elephant. Orwell in fact, “did not in the least want to shoot him” but

When you know that everyone wants you to do something and their will is pushing yours, even if you feel like what they want done isn't what you believe should be done. This is the problem that George Orwell faced, he was pushed by a crowd to kill the the elephant even though he felt it was wrong.  The essay shows through the language that Orwell uses that his pride pushed him to kill the elephant and the deep regret he feels afterwards.

Have you ever been pressured into doing something you didn’t want to, but felt like you had no other option? The narrator in Orwell's, “Shooting an Elephant” had a very similar experience. He was pressed by the Burmese into committing a senseless killing that he did not deem necessary. This transformation of the main characters mentality and morals gives the audience a terrific example of characterization, which would not be possible without the effective use of point of view in Orwell's story.

Orwell abandons his morals and kills the elephant to garner the approval of the Burmans. He feels compelled to shoot the animal because the Burmans "did not like me, but with the magical rifle in

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