Why Did George Kill 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.

At that moment though George looks around and sees that he has drawn such a huge crowd that is waiting and pressuring him into shooting the elephant. This would not have been a huge thing, but provided that the same crowd that had hated George was now showing interest in him he figured he must shoot the elephant. This is where he is linked with the other short story the Things They Carried.

One day, an elephant broke free from it’s chains and in a fit of “must” began ravaging the bazaar. The Burmese were without weapons, so they had little defense against the beast. Thus, Orwell set out to find it with a rifle much too small to any damage. It was not until, the elephant killed a man that Orwell sent for an elephant rifle. However, upon seeing the elephant rifle the natives went into a frenzy, excited to see the beast killed, but more excited for the meat. The narrator had no intention of shooting the elephant, for once he found it, it was peacefully eating grass, its “must” already wearing off. In the moment, Orwell knew he should not shoot the animal, it was a source of income for someone, an expensive piece of machinery. However, with the crowd of two thousand standing behind him, this choice was far from easy. It is here where the paradox of imperialism begins. Despite Orwell being the one with the rifle and technically being in charge, he feels powerless against the natives. It was in that moment that the author realizes when a man “becomes a tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.” Orwell eventually chose to slay the elephant with multiple gunshots, much to the natives pleasure. To wrap up the story, Orwell explains that he simply shot the elephant to avoid looking a

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

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.

Upon seeing the rifle, a huge crowd started to follow him. He had no intention to kill the elephant. However, the crowd was expecting him to shoot it. They did not want to kill it because it had destroyed the bazaar, but rather to enjoy the fun and to get the elephant meat. The crowd’s expectation leaves Orwell no choice but to shoot the elephant. He points out that he had to shoot it to “impress the ‘natives’” (7). If he had not done it, the crowd would have laugh at him, and it would hurt his pride as a white man living in the East. In the end, he decided to trigger the gun and shot the elephant.

George Orwell began the essay with his perspective on British domination. He stated that it is evil and alongside of that it is oppressive. He felt hatred and guilt toward himself and the Burmese people. The people of Burma did not feel threatened because the narrator of the story had killed the elephant. The Burmese people have lost their dignity and integrity while trying to fight off the British imperialism. Orwell uses allegories to describe his experience of the British imperialism and he had his own view of the matter of slaying the elephant. He successfully used ethos, pathos, and logos by attracting the audience to read his story. He had to make a scene in the story to make the people of Burma feel the same emotion. The elephant was the one reason why it makes this story emotional. He used logos to show that he can kill the elephant even if he does not want to so that it does not make him look fool.

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

The sort of convenient racism allows people to hate one another for no good reason. The elephant, along with the two thousand Burmese, plays an even more depressing role when compared to the soldier. The elephant plays the "stricken, shrunken, immensely old" countries that have been stormed and conquered by imperialism, while the Burmese play its "helpless" people.(4,1) The once great and powerful elephant is reduced to "senility" by the bullets, just as the countries like India are crushed by the modern technology of the imperial countries. The "great beast," meaning both the elephant and the countries that it represents, becomes "powerless to move and yet powerless to die" under the hands of the white man.(4) The mob of Burmese people, the people of the colonized country, shows that imperialism has taken from them the confidence to defend their country. Instead of organizing to drive out imperialism, these people "spit betel juice" on white women to release their anger, and instead of saving an elephant that a fellow Burmese owned, they have decided to take its meat.(1) The people who are suppressed by imperialism become hateful and selfish in their struggle to survive in their dying country. Together, the officer, the Burmese, and the elephant portray imperialism as an institution that is only capable of harm.

There are many different reasons as to why George Orwell chose to shoot the Elephant in the short story, ”Shooting an Elephant”. In the following essay, there will be a wide and deep response of why George Orwell chose to shoot the elephant in the end.

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

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

In the story by George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”, George, a European police officer, shot the elephant because he was called upon by a sup-inspector at a police station on the other end of town to handle the matter of ravaging elephant. As the village people from the City of Moulmein, gathered around with excitement, he felt as he must shoot the innocent elephant that had escaped due to the fact that he felt pressured into doing so. The Burmans, did not expect the Europeans with open arms, so when this opportunity presented itself he reacted on the reaction of the people of the City of Moulmein. So since they all cheered and had smiles on their face he wanted to please the crowd, even though,

Orwell as author, his protagonist as narrator, and indeed the crowd all anthropomorphize, attribute human characteristics, to the elephant. But the elephant, of course, is well-known for its high level of intelligence, a fact which raises it out of the merely animal category; and the social structure of Burmese society under the British tends to underscore such quasi-human status. The animal is a working animal and to do work is to engage in a recognizably social activity; the animal belongs, as Orwell later discloses, to an Indian, a person below the British in the local hierarchy but above the Burmese, a person of some wealth, for the elephant is the equivalent of “a huge and costly piece of machinery” in the local economy. The elephant, like the human overlords of the place, can therefore function as an object of resentment, a safer one (in fact) than any actual person, because offending him entails little chance of official reprisal. Moreover, the elephant has “destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow, and raided some fruit-stalls,” and he has trampled to death “a black, Dravidian coolie.” The quasi-human animal has committed a quasi-criminal act, one involving deadly violence, which places him in jeopardy of a quasi-legal and fully lethal response. The ambiant resentment of Moulmein, the town where the action occurs, suddenly possesses a center around which it can safely polarize, around which a fierce unanimity-minus-one can abruptly form and