Shooting An Elephant

Thankfully the run of Elephant's Graveyard at GCC has come to an end. The plays overly dark, cautionary tale about the evils of using wild animals to entertain the masses, left its audience depressed and deflated. While many playwrights have dark themes such as this play, they usually balance it with some levity and humor so that audiences are entertained as well as motivated to react to the playwrights cause. Unfortunately this play forgot to entertain, and neglected to offer any light.

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

In the very first paragraph of the story the character tells of his experience on a football field. He stated that “when a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter” (Orwell 1). The character also recounts of other experiences he has where “insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance” (Orwell 1). In his own words the character describes how he feels about these situations. He states how the Burman’s actions badly got on his nerves. He explains how overwhelming and upsetting his job makes him, so much so that he wants to quit. It is important to note the characters perception of the Burmese because it shows that his rancor towards them does not affect his longing for respect. This is a basic point that helps set up the story to show what the characters

At the same time, the narrator is also the victim of the Imperialism System itself. Under the system, it seems that the British manipulate the Burmese, but in reality, it is the opposite situation. The Burmese had the control over the British, especially people like the author who worked in a country under colonization. Orwell

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.

To start with, the narrative in “The Elephant in the Village of the Blind” is very simple; the main

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.

The narrator decided to shoot the elephant because he realized he will lose face and be humiliated if he does not shoot it.

The story “Shooting an Elephant” is told by an ongoing and first person narrator, who was committed to events he was faced with and obtained insight and wisdom from these adventures even though he struggled internally and externally.

Elephants have been victims of not just the incessant poaching but also of the civil wars; ultimately making them to fight back. The killing case have gone over the roof, as the “singular perversity” (Siebert 353) of the attacks. In India, “nearly one thousand people have been killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004” (Siebert 353). Several frequent attacks were recorded in Africa and other villages where the denizens were forced to evacuate their houses. ‘nearly one thousand’ which accentuates the gravity of the situation in 4 years had gained a lot of attention from the elephants researchers. Seibert’s prime third perspective, Gay Bradshaw, Oregon State psychologist, claims that that “everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed” (Siebert 353). The choice of diction ‘dramatically’ indicates that elephants are not being violent towards human beings but they are also doing it intentionally. Dramatic behavior changes over the years are now being explained in the elephants. “Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma” (Siebert 354), due to “decades of poaching and habitat loss” (Siebert 354). Elephants are becoming more destructive and Bradshaw looked into combining “traditional research into elephant behavior with insights about trauma drawn from

He heard screams and naked children being told to run down the street and saw what happened. The wild elephant had attacked a black Dravidian coolie and killed him. The police officer immediately called for an elephant rifle from a friend nearby and was told of the location of the elephant. The elephant was said to be in the paddy fields only a few hundred yards away and was followed by a growing crowd while walking to the location. Inevitably he knew he may have to shoot the elephant, but called for the rifle just for self-defense. When he arrived to the location and saw the elephant he wanted to try and get it back to the town unharmed because of its value, but there was something that was changing his mind. The small crowd that was growing came to be a group of two thousand right at his heels excited and wanting the elephant to be shot right there on the spot. He thought, shoved a cartridge in the magazine, laid down, aimed, and shot the elephant. The elephant didn’t go down right then but a couple bullets later it finally came to rest and died an half an hour later. He did the right thing legally and got the locals respect

George Orwell was born in colonial India but was educated in England. When Britain created and empire, Orwell had been working for the police of the British Army in the location of Burma. Orwell realized there was something wrong with certain ways of government and that their is cultural conflicts. “Convinced that human decency and common sense were the basis of a just society, the author repeatedly found himself in conflict with the ideological mass movements of his time, ranging from capitalism to fascism and communism”(Gale). With the realization of these things, Orwell based many of his stories off of cultural differences, and the negatives of different types of government. In George Orwell’s short story Shooting an Elephant, Orwell explains his bitter days of being a police officer in Burma. Shooting an Elephant explains three important messages Orwell learned while in Burma.

He walked back with a smile upon his face. He thought it was funny how shocked we all were. This was an everyday thing for the man. He then asked who lived in cabin 5A, and two ladies walked from the back of the group and the guide told us to wait here while he brought them back to their cabin. So here we were alone in the darkness as the guide brought the woman to their cabin. We all stood in complete silence believing that if we talked the elephant would surely hear us and come charging. As I was registering what just happened the two woman and the guide came back. "what happened," exclaimed a man with large glasses and a untidy mustache. You could tell just by looking at the woman that

Elephant is a short story written by Polly Clark in 2006. My focus point is William and his life, which I will analyze and interpret. I will also discuss the