Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is a satirical essay on the British Imperialism. Narration: The story is a first-person narrative in which the narrator describes his confused state of mind and his inability to decide and act without hesitation Jun 22, · Shooting an Elephant is mainly about the tussle going on in Orwell’s conscience while working as a police officer for the British in Burma. However, apart from imperialism and its effects on local life, the essay is also about how the inherent evil of imperialism is destroying the freedom of both the oppressor and the blogger.comted Reading Time: 11 mins Sep 29, · Shooting an Elephant Essay. September 29, by Essay Writer. In the essay “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell tries to put across the dilemma of a white man in a position of power in the imperialistic Britain, who does not quite identify with the evils of imperialism. This often leads him in to uncomfortable situations requiring him to take actions
Orwell's Shooting an elephant: Summary, Analysis & Essay Questions
This material remains under copyright in the US and is reproduced here with the kind assistance of the Orwell Estate. It has never been easier to support our work. In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.
I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress, essay shooting an elephant.
As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. 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.
This happened more than once. 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 young Buddhist priests were the worst of all.
There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans. All this was perplexing and upsetting.
For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.
The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos — all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective.
I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, essay shooting an elephant, still less essay shooting an elephant I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.
Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can essay shooting an elephant him off duty. One day something happened which 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 — essay shooting an elephant real motives for which despotic governments act.
Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar, essay shooting an elephant. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem.
The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. Essay shooting an elephant Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.
We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant.
I had almost made up my mind that the whole story essay shooting an elephant a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away, essay shooting an elephant. Go away this instant! Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes.
The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and essay shooting an elephant him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. Essay shooting an elephant was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side.
His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant. The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away.
As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant.
They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy.
I had no intention of shooting the elephant — I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary — and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass.
The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, essay shooting an elephant, his left side towards us. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth, essay shooting an elephant.
I had halted on the road. 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 — it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery — and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided.
And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a essay shooting an elephant. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him, essay shooting an elephant.
I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home. But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me.
It was essay shooting an elephant immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot.
They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching.
And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. 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. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.
He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the essay shooting an elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle, essay shooting an elephant.
A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, essay shooting an elephant, with two thousand people essay shooting an elephant at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible, essay shooting an elephant.
The crowd would laugh at me. But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have.
It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly.
But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving.
They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if essay shooting an elephant left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him. It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do.
I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back.
But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller.
But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, essay shooting an elephant, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that essay shooting an elephant, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid essay shooting an elephant the ordinary sense, essay shooting an elephant, as I would have been if I had been alone.
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.
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, time: 17:33Shooting an Elephant | The Orwell Foundation
George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant," is a nonfiction narrative essay about an incident that occurred during the time of Orwell’s service as a police officer in Burma. The essay is centered around an event in which he was forced to shoot an elephant, resulting in a battle between his own personal beliefs and the expectations of those around him May 19, · In the essay Shooting an Elephant,George Orwell uses plenty of imagery to show a specific scene to the reader. He goes into full detail during the shooting to evoke his senses and emotions at the time of the event. This is shown to the audience when describing the natives and the gruesome deaths of the Dravidian coolie and the elephant Shooting an Elephant Words | 4 Pages. George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” “Shooting an Elephant” is an essay written by George Orwell and published in (Orwell 66). Orwell was born June 25, , as Eric Arthur Blair and passed away January 21, , in India (“George Orwell Biography”)
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