Shooting An Elephant Imperialism

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

“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.

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

Haley Collins Professor Henery English 100 February 17, 2016 Shooting an Elephant The essay “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell is set in time during the 1800’s when the country of Burma had been conquer and then controlled by the British. In “Shooting and Elephant,” the essay is illustrated through the eyes of a British Imperial Officer who undergoes a life-changing event that demonstrates the true effects Imperial control. In this essay Orwell describes the horrific killing of an elephant and the emotions and frustrations the Officer endures while deciding the initial fate of the animal.

It only takes a second to make a choice, yet the choice made in that second can have ramifications for a lifetime. In the story, “Shooting an Elephant”, by George Orwell, the author uses his experience and reevaluates himself as a British police officer of Moulmein, Burma. He is hated by the village because he is a British man. Orwell goes up against a situation in life. He is confronted with difficulty such as an elephant in need to be killed because Orwell does not wish to face humiliation from the natives.

Throughout the narrative he repeated said, “I had no intention of shooting the elephant” also adding on saying, “I merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary”. He did not want to harm the elephant and especially not shoot it. Another reason was the fact that he did not want to become the oppressor he hated so much. He did not want to become tyrant and destroy much like the people he despices. He does not want to turn like “the white man” and destroy his own freedom and that of the people.

The narrator appears to be forced to shoot the elephant by the Burman people although it remained his own decision. [point #1] George Orwell’s narrator says: “Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind”. (Orwell, 2) [example #1] Orwell describes the narrator as an “absurd puppet” and a “leading actor of the piece” as if the

The essay is narrated by a colonial policeman, presumably Orwell himself, in British Burma who mentions that killing the elephant “gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism,” already foreshadowing the impact of the incident. Shooting the elephant proves to be a difficult task to recover from as the graphic imagery of the elephant’s blood welling out like “red velvet” while juxtaposed with its “great agony” suggests the significant impact of its pain on the shooter. The elephant is an innocent figure, shown by the simile comparing it to a cow, in this essay who pays the price for the white man’s superiority complex due to imperialism. Orwell recognises in the moment that he is “an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind” and so fulfils the duty of a “sahib,” suggesting how the difficult experience of shooting an innocent looking animal has led him to further understand the effects of imperialism on the oppressors. The narrative like structure of the essay allows Orwell to formulate his thesis through an incident he learned from.

We all know that Orwell does not believe that the elephant is dangerous at all. For he saw the Elephant playing by itself and eating. However, the main point for the people of Burmese is that the Elephant killed an innocent human being and it needs to be punished. Moreover, as they are lacking of their food supply, they needed food especially meat to eat daily. He knew that is an working animal which means, it just got escaped out of its chain and is far more worth not to be killed. He said,“As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant.”(514) He know it is not dangerous anymore and there is no need to shoot the elephant however, he took his riffle

“Shooting an Elephant” is based upon George Orwell experience with the Indian Imperial Police. As a British officer, the narrator was “all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. This confines a universal experience of going against one’s own humanity at the cost of a part of that humanity. Throughout the story, the narrator feels that imperialism is evil, because he feels that imperialism restricts the freedom of the natives reducing them to inferior status in their own soil. Although he was against killing an elephant, he processed on doing it. What the author was conveying to the audience is that we have decisions in life that will impact us for life. We need to take into consideration of the choices before we chose

Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” Wake Tech: English 111 Reader, edited by Wayde Vickrey, et al., 2nd ed., Hayden Mcneil, 2017, pp. 191-197. The author in this narrative works as a police officer for a town in Burma. He is hated by the towns people and is often harassed for serving the British Empire. The Burmese trip and insult him while young Buddhist priests torment him. Although, he works as a police officer for the British, he secretly opposes them. Though with the constant abuse from the Burmese he inevitably starts to resent them. One morning Orwell received a call asking if he could take care of a wild elephant. He soon heads out, equipped with a small riffle, to find the elephant. When he comes across the animal, he has no intention of killing it, but he realizes that there is a massive group of people watching behind him. In this moment, he has to decide wether or not to kill the animal. Orwell realizes that if he doesn’t he will be humiliated, so he decides to shoot the elephant. After three life threatening shots the elephant does not die. The officer fires two more shots. Then he gets his small riffle and empties many bullets into the elephant's heart. Still the elephant does not die. Orwell, unable to let the elephant suffer anymore and unable to watch it slowly die, leaves. The elephant, like the Burmese people, has become the victim of the British imperialist’s need to be saved from humiliation.

The narrator’s trouble was heightened due to the fact that there was a loose elephant. For safety, and safety only, Orwell grabbed an elephant rifle in the case that problems were aroused. Upon seeing the rifle, the natives followed him like a pack of hungry wolves. The narrator told the readers that “The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on, and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do. There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges, into the magazine and lay down the road to get a better aim” (Orwell 5). The narrator was angry that he was pressured to kill the elephant. In his conscience, he thought that he would leave the elephant alone because it was acting peaceful. He felt that the elephant was settling down and does not require to be put down. Orwell felt as though the crowd was going to laugh at him for being a coward.  Orwell did not want to be labeled as a coward and therefore felt the need to kill the elephant. The narrator did not want to feel as though he could not kill the elephant and because he did feel this way, he was angry that the natives pressured him to shoot the elephant.

The protagonist of the story equally facing the moral divide of what is just and unjust when encountered with a prior raging, but now a docile elephant, and the consequences of any action he takes. George Orwell is in a police officer in the lower subsection of Burma; his position is one of dissention throughout both the Burman natives and the police forces themselves. Orwell must act in a manner that doesn’t cause the overbearing police force to lose any credibility or power over the surrounding cities. In contrast, Orwell’s morals keeps his heart with the freedom of the elephant, mulling over the benefits and repercussions from all sides of the interfering factors. Orwell considers leading the animal to safety and returning the prized animal to its owner but quickly realizes that with the massive crowd behind him, he was expected to kill the elephant in some grandiose show of power with his magical weapons. The dilemma was bought to resolution in the aforementioned contemplations, in regards to his position of power and the perception of those he governs. Orwell sums up the dilemma with “… when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” (Lines 129-130, Pg. 1257). This musing is expressing the direct correlation of tyrants to their oppressed and how the position of power forces the tyrant to make decisions that even they cannot fully revel in; making themselves, also, the oppressed to their own antics. Even before he points the weapon at the elephant for a fatal blow he understands that with the growing mass of onlookers he must uphold a façade of absolute resolution in fear of having his precarious position mocked and belittled. Orwell then recounts the gruesomely slow death of the elephant, which plays as a representation of his own morals being shot down and tortured by the job he can’t escape and

In reading the literature by George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” the main character struggles between killing the majestic elephant, and looking like a fool to the natives. According the natives the elephant has been wreaking havoc across the city like a savage beast. Although the beast acted this way I do not believe that the elephant is doing these actions with harmful intent, but rather out of an act of fear that somebody would hurt it. Towards the end of the story the main character has his gun lined up to shoot the elephant , but hesitates because the beast that was described is now a majestic animal eating in the grass, the only reason the main character shoots the elephant is because he cracked under the pressure of the people and did not want to look like a fool. I believe that the burmese people wanted to kill the elephant because they sa it as a savage beast instead of the majestic creature it truly was.

After shooting the elephant, the British police officer was very sad because of its suffering. That is why he could not stay anymore and went away. His apologetic attitudes express his hatred towards executing the large creature. While he was trying to make a decision whether to kill the elephant or not, he realized that in reality he was only “an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of yellow faces behind”. However, he accepted the control of those yellow faces and, as a result, felt a great remorse. Though he gave reasons for his action, such as a man’s death because of the elephant, the fear of being humiliated by thousand Burmans, and the rule of the imperialist supremacy for this case, he knew that shooting the elephant would be a murder and be against his own moral beliefs. Despite his cruel action towards the large creature, he still realizes that human being’s acting in a certain way under the pressure of others “to avoid looking a fool” cannot be considered as a right