Shooting An Elephant

As a European white man in the British colony of India, George Orwell, in his narrative essay Shooting an Elephant, describes one of his most memorable events while living in the Southeast Asian nation of Burma. Orwell’s purpose is to share the absolute horror of living in imperialism. He adopts a tense tone throughout his essay by using vivid description and gruesome imagery in order to relate the incident with the elephant to what it is like to live in imperialism.

George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’ (Orwel, 1936) represents a number of strangers being involved in a combined encounter. The situation throughout the essay represents the unjust British occupation of Burma, the hatred towards him as a British officer and the elephant symbolising the British. The part of the text chosen clearly exemplifies how a forced duty can lead to hatred. The text chosen displays that he is forced to encounter the Burmese people yet they despise him. Although the encounter with the Burmese improves with the arrival of the elephant, Orwell still has a sense of isolation. Throughout the text Orwell questions the presence of the British in the East exploring that the encounter with the Burmese should not have took place.

Orwell starts the story with his struggle with the Burmese people. “As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.” “In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves.” The narrator is upset that he is hated just for doing his job. When he actually hated his job and

George Orwell’s short story, “Shooting an Elephant”, demonstrates the harsh environment, and survivalist mode that the people of Burma are in. The Burmese people had been unjustly seized over, the British Empire was crumbling therefore they invaded the space around them. The narrator starts preparing the essay manifesting his perspective on British Imperialism. He claims that it is evil and he is contradicting the oppressors. Although he is a British officer in Burma, he feels a certain hatred and guilt towards himself, the empire, and the “evil-spirited little beasts,” (Orwell) the Burmese people.

In George Orwells’s “Shooting an Elephant”, we see how the author describes how he is in a very special and difficult circumstance. The background information he gives in the story explains how he was born and raised in India, but went to school in England. Soon after, he became an officer for the English government but was stationed over in India during their imperialistic reign. Much of this information is useful to the reader in helping understand his unique situation that he finds himself in the story. Throughout the story we notice symbols such as the rifle, the elephant, and even Orwell himself that represent the British’s power over the people, the evils of imperialism, and the slow decline of the British empire.

George Orwell’s essay, Shooting an Elephant, chronicles Orwell’s experiences in Moulmein, Burma. Orwell describes his growing hatred for British imperialism and his hardship shooting a wild elephant. Orwell states the incident of shooting the elephant “in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism.” The incident made Orwell aware that, “governments act from the same petty impulses” that drove Orwell to shoot the elephant.

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.

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

In “Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell achieves two achievements : he shows us his personal experience and his expression while he was in Burma; he use the metaphor of the elephant to explain to describe what Burma looked like when it was under the British Imperialism. The special about this essay is that Orwell tells us a story not only to see the experience that he had in Burma; he also perfectly uses the metaphor of the elephant to give us deep information about the Imperialism. By going through this essay, we can deeply understand what he thinks in his head. He successfully uses the word choices and the sentences to express his feeling. By reading this essay, Orwell succeeds us with his mesmerizing sentences and shows us the

Second of all, all of the characters experienced becoming a victim. To the Burmese, The British are in sway of them; However, Orwell feels it is in reverse. When he shot the elephant, the elephant became the

Like Donald Trump, who has viewers and followers which compel him to do (say) sensational things, George Orwell’s 1936 short story “Shooting an elephant,” features a protagonist compelled to questionable action by the mob. A police officer based in Burma who was not liked or accepted by the Burmese people is compelled to kill an elephant that is causing harm to everything in its path as in killing a man and destroying a hut. He took his gun thinking he would use it to frighten the animal but as he travelled towards the elephant the pressure to kill the elephant increases at every turn. The more people who gathered, the more he felt he had to give the community the action they were hoping for (and the meat). He ends up shooting the elephant to satisfy the crowd and to “avoid looking like a fool”.

The short story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell is a memoir dealing with the relationship between two groups of people, the British Empire and their previous colony, Burma. In the story Orwell executes an Elephant, who on accounts of the local Burmese people had killed a Burmese man. Throughout the story Orwell represents the two main groups of people in very different ways. The Burmese are seen as spiteful people that are wrongly oppressed and made to rely on the British for everything. These perspective comes from Orwell’s own ethical beliefs as well as being an enforcer of the Empire.

The short story Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is about Orwell’s experience with peer pressure as a sub-divisional police officer in Moulmein, Lower Burma. This experience occurred during the 1930s when the Burmese had a very strong anti-European feeling because they did not want people who are not natives controlling their own country`s domestic and international affairs. It commenced when the sub-inspector at a police station asked him to control an elephant who wrecked the bazaar, livestock, a house and ate fruit in the city. Its mahout, the only person who can control it when it was in that state, was a twelve hours` journey away from the elephant because he went in the wrong direction. The elephant also broke its chain when its

George Orwell show the effects of imperialism and the development of tyranny in an imperialistic society, as a result of dehumanization and the forcing of ideals upon a population, and also how it executes the way the oppressors perform their tasks. In “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell shows he is reflecting on his writing in Politics and the English Language”, because he is honest. Orwell shows that the oppressor is doing what the Burmese people want, so he will not look a fool. Orwell goes against his sympathy for the elephant and shoots him. Some may criticize that this is a form of animal cruelty, but he tells the truth that it is much worse to be humiliated and laughed upon. Like in most of his writings, Orwell likes to get straight to the