The Depictions of Imperialism in Shooting an Elephany by George Orwell

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.

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

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

“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.

The perspective and ideas given by Orwell show his true character and lessens the overall power set up for him. Although Orwell is a

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.

Orwell provokes a number of emotions. He establishes that his character is weak when he talks about Burmese people and how they laugh, mock at him and carry the anti-European feeling. He tries to win the reader’s sympathy by narrating an incident of being purposely tripped by a Burmese in a football field and not been called a foul. He next narrates about how he was forced against his will to shoot at the elephant. Its dramatic death provoked a number of emotions.

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

A main strength of this book is the authors eye for non-judgment, detail, discussing human behavior through power. An example of this would be an incident when the governor was injured in the novel. The governor was wounded by a spear thrown at him and the British interpretation was that the British believed an Australian naïve threw a spear at the enemy in simple panic (M, 2012). Clendinnen does not agree with this interpretation because there are not enough details to verify the reason. The explanation is based off an assumption and the reputation of the Australian natives that the British believe in. Even though Clendinnen does not know the motive behind the throwing the spear she does suggest an explanation based off Australian history where Australians performed a ritual to humble a person who had hurt them without destroying their larger alliance with him (M, 2012). Clendinnen also paints a picture for the reader with her vivid choice of words. With detail, she discusses the viewpoint from an Australian native hiding a bush observing the new people stepping on their land, wondering

” , the ‘white man’ has conditioned those who fought in the wars, Tayo is the only one to realise that the native American soldiers never had any freedom, and are still being influenced and controlled by the ‘white man’. Even when the war is over Tayo’s comrades blame themselves, not realising their emotions and knowledge has been conditioned. Tayo recalls in a dream the pain he felt when forced to kill a group of what he is told are Japanese soldiers however swears his uncle Josiah was in the crowd, “Tayo started screaming because it wasn’t a Jap, it was Josiah, eyes shrinking back into the skull and all their shining black light glazed over by death” , Tayo had no freedom to choose, he was forced by the ‘white man’ to kill a group of innocent

Earning respect from the villagers meant shooting the elephant, and not shooting the elephant; humiliation. This is the problem the narrator faced in the story Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell. The narrator was already hated for being an English police officer by the locals in Burma. Any hatred he received could be resolved through the rampant elephant situation that arises, although, this was not an easy case to handle. However, the narrator takes it on in hopes of earning respect from the villagers. The narrator is faced with two different options and he may have not made the best decision. In the end, the narrator decides to shoot the elephant, but he should have let the elephant live because the elephant’s attack was over when he

In conclusion George Orwell essay “ Shooting An Elephant” expresses through his language that pride was something that pushed him to pull the trigger even though if it had been him alone he would have never pulled it.  He also showed  through his use of colour language and imagery the regret he feels for shooting the

This whole story is a police officer who gets a call that there is a wild elephant that is in must and needs to be tamed. Well he is a police officer so he doesn't know a whole lot of stuff to do about it. The owner of the elephant is a while aways and he doesn’t know how to command and elephant. So he brings his rifle for self defense, his intention were not to kill this elephant. As he is chasing it the townspeople sees this rifle and are excited that he is going to shoot it for meat. This officers does not want to kill this animal. The only thing this animal is doing is wrecking a couple of things and it isn't hurting anyone. Now he has finally caught up to this elephant and it's just sitting in peace in a empty field but the townspeople are still there and they're still excited about the whole thing. Well he doesn’t want to be laughed at or made fun of so he ends up shooting the elephant and killing

Imperial rule in Burma. The essay starts off with the narrator getting ready to witness and execution by

To begin with, I am going to start with a review of the essay “Shooting an elephant”. The essay talks about a police officer in Lower Burma and his name is Orwell, he was a very easy target to be laughed at. Orwell did not like his job also he was not well educated. One morning a police department called him saying that an elephant was ragging. The elephant destroyed the stock and bamboo huts. Following that, the elephant also killed a cow. Supposedly the elephant also killed a human. The people from Burma were shouting to kill the elephant. Orwell did not want to kill the elephant, they only wanted to kill the elephant for the meat. In fact, the people started to dislike Orwell because he didn’t want to kill the animal. Later on, the elephant