Orwell Shooting An Elephant Summary

In George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell choice of shooting the elephant was made due to internal pressure. The British Officer is station at Lower Burma. He hates his duty and despises the British Empire; the Officer secretly likes the Burmese. The Burmese shouted at the Officer to shoot the elephant when they saw him holding the “magical rifle,” but his moral conscience made him not want to shoot the elephant. When the Officer notice thousandths of Burmese staring at him, he felt like he must “do what the natives expect of him,“ because if he doesn’t shoot the elephant “the crowd would laugh” at him.

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, much like 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 says that, 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.

George Orwell who wrote a narrative essay Shooting an Elephant” has a tense tone of literature towards his life. He is using a stressed tone due to peer pressure, and lack of confidence toward himself as he is an imperialist who came to protect uphold the laws. He's difficult attitude sets the scene for the story in his eyes. Throughout the story the concept of his decisions and action will be projected through the uses of diction; the write words to express his feelings.

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

Story is about a Burma village where an elephant got loose and wreaked havoc on the town and kills a villager (a man). George Orwell is the sheriff and ultimately makes the choice to kill the elephant.

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.

“A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes,” Orwell says this in his essay “Shooting an Elephant” that is in The Norton Mix textbook (273-74). Essays are hard, especially when you are assigned to work with people you believe may have not have anything in common with you. Many people find it difficult to write about themselves, which makes this assignment even more grueling. Four people, talking and writing, depending on each other for a grade, of course it will be grueling. No one wants to depend on others to do their part, but in this group things came together quite well in the end. Each of us wrote our own body paragraph, which we believe will be clear with the

“To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible” (137). Orwell felt that the Burmese would laugh at him and throughout his whole life; every white men’s life would be one long struggle not to be laughed at (137). During his time in Burma, Orwell had to deal with many of the locals being mean to him and getting laughed at for it. He knew if he did not shoot the elephant, it would give the people an opportunity harass him even more. Shooting the elephant gave him a chance to show the people that he was not the fool they all made him out to be.

The essay “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell is about a particular day the narrator was living in British occupied Burma. The author tells about an event that still bothers him, in which he had a choice in whether or not to shoot and kill an elephant. The episode seems to still haunt him years later. The author seemed to write the essay in part to help himself cope with the act that he had committed. By his own admission, the narrator divulges that he does not share the same beliefs as the powerful government that he represents.

Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell merely trying to not look like a fool, an inner battle testing his morality and mind. The story taking place in Burma, the protagonist, a British police officer named George Orwell. Orwell is picked on and loathed by the Burmese, constantly enduring their tricks and pure despisement. The story truly starts when he is called into do something about a stray elephant who is raging at a bazaar. Once he arrives at the scene him, a Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables discover a dead body a coolie). The coolie had been killed by the raging elephant, upon discovering the gruesome scene, the office requests an elephant rifle be brought to him. The orderly after delivering the rifle, tells Orwell the location

George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, narrated the story of him shooting a “must” elephant when he was a police officer in Burma. He was both, furious of the Burmese men and hated the British imperialism. The locals always mocked him and cheated him as he was an European. Orwell, one day, was told of an elephant which had been rampaging across the “bazaar”. He took his rifle along with him and set out to the town, to find more details and to analyze the situation. On his way, he learnt that the “must” elephant had broken its chains and escaped on the previous night. The elephant’s caretaker who had gone in pursuit of the elephant had taken the wrong direction and was twelve hours away. He also came to know that the elephant had caused so much damage, which also included the destruction of a hut, stall and

The story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell seeks to show the audience how easily people are influenced by the expectations of others. He accomplishes this by exploring the effects of British imperialism on the people of lower Burma. Orwell acts as the narrator in this story, telling of experiences he had while working as a sub-divisional police officer in Burma. He explains how he secretly hated his job and supported the Burmese people who where being oppressed. One day, an elephant is found loose wandering around the town causing ruckus, and even killing an Indian coolie. Orwell was ordered to respond to this incident and take control of the situation with whatever means necessary. When he finally finds the elephant, he realizes that it is no longer endangering anyone, and there is no need to shoot it. However, the Burmese people soon gather around and shout excitedly, causing Orwell to change his mind and shoot the elephant to avoid humiliations. The death of the elephant is described with excruciating detail, showing how the elephant suffered as it endured a slow death. At the end, Orwell explains how neither the natives nor his fellow British police officers

Through reading and writing literature we use our brains to think abstractly about, and dive deeper into, common ideas. On the surface, George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” tells the story of the struggle between those who rule and those who are ruled over, while personifying this struggle through the narrator and his internal struggle. I would argue that more can be taken from this essay and applied to make a lasting impact on the heart of a young person. We live in world where young adults are coming of age in a world where you express yourself in one-hundred-forty characters or less. Where peers are free to label each other as intolerant if they don’t share common views. Where the popular desire is not to be yourself, but to find a way to make yourself different. “Shooting an Elephant” has the power to give perspective on these destructive, and all too common, patterns of thought.

Shooting an Elephant Have you ever had one of those situations that make you wonder if you are doing the right, moral thing? In the essay Shooting an Elephant, Orwell had to make a very difficult decision on whether or not to shoot an elephant that was causing problem in a local village. Despite not wanting to shoot the elephant, Orwell shot the elephant because it had killed a man earlier that day and did not wait for the owner to return. I disagree with Orwell’s decision to shoot the elephant because, I feel that Orwell over looked the fact that the elephant could have been startled by an unknown source and, that the elephant could have been calmed back down.

The area of focus I chose was a work from the Innocence and Experience chapter. The work of fiction that I chose to analyze is “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell. The main question is whether what he did in the story was ethical. This story is about the inner fight between right and wrong, “if I do this…” or “if I do that…” or “what if I don’t do anything?” Bottom line is you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.