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Compare And Contrast Back To My Own Country And Shooting An Elephant

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Ashley Toledo Mrs. Zech English 12 Period 7 14 March 2023 Compare and Contrast Essay Oftentimes in stories authors relate to the same thing whether it has to do with a theme or a past event. Both “Back to My Own Country” and “Shooting an Elephant” discuss the classification of color. However, Levy’s essay talks about growing up differently than those of her color; whereas, Orwell’s short story talks about doing something because of peer pressure. In “Back to My Own Country” the author Andrea Levy wrote a narrative essay. She talks a lot about her early childhood and what it was like for her while growing up. She begins by saying “I remember a journey I took on a London bus when I was a young girl. It was the early nineteen sixties”(Levy 691). At this time in the world seeing someone of color wasn’t very common. She goes more into detail by providing the year and how she could tell the guy wasn’t from around that area. During this time people of …show more content…

In this essay he talks a lot about how he was disliked by a large number of people. He talks about being a “sub divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter”(Orwell 705). He feels like he doesn’t belong as well because he is European. However, he is later on forced to do something because of peer pressure unlike Andrea Levy’s story. He begins by saying “but I did not want to shoot the elephant”(Orwell 709). He had been watching this elephant for a while and it wasn’t currently disrupting the people. Causing him to not want to kill the elephant because technically it wasn’t causing any harm. He also talks about the worth of the elephant by saying “alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds, dead he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds possibly”(Orwell 709). By him stating that observation it shows that if it were up to him he wouldn’t kill the

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“ As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelled the elephant. ”(Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant (1936): n. pag.

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Hannah Edmiston Boudreau AP Language Friday 25 September, 2015 Shooting an Elephant Analyzing Rhetorical Devices Shooting an Elephant, written by George Orwell in 1936, describes his experience working as a British officer located in Moulmein, Burma. He writes his essay to reveal the cruelty and disastrous outcome of imperialism he witnesses. Orwell uses strong resource of language such as symbolism, metaphors and imagery to express his disdain for British imperialism. Orwell uses symbolism to connect the character of the elephant to the effects of imperialism.

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(Orwell 3). The ideas learned from this quote is that shooting the elephant would embrace the people, it would make the people support the officer and give him the respect he deserves. This is

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Even though Orwell did commit the crime of shooting an elephant, throughout the story he used ethos, pathos, and figurative language to convince the audience if given the opportunity he would never shoot an elephant again because the elephant represents the innocence of people.     First and foremost, Orwell establishes his ethos. As stated in Everything’s an Argument, ethos is described as the author's credibility. He establishes his ethos right from the beginning of the story when he states he works for the British but he despises them.

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In Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. gives an inside look at the racism and oppression that African American’s had to face during the early 1960’s. Not only did King portray the oppression he dealt with through his writing, but, George Orwell did as well in his story Shooting an Elephant. As shown in both readings, Martin Luther King and George Orwell had both been oppressed, but in two very different ways. King discusses the oppression that had spread throughout the USA created by racist, white America, while Orwell dealt with oppression by the Burmese because he had been apart of Britain’s imperial law enforcement. The difference between King and Orwell is that King had been oppressed because something he could not change,

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The essay explores an apparent paradox about the behavior of Europeans, who supposedly have power over their colonial subjects. Orwell focuses on one important incident. (shooting the elephant) The whole essay is more than Orwell’s killing of the elephant: the whole incident was, he tells us, a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act.’ He cared how people would see him if he did not kill the elephant.

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Throughout “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell made his thesis about the effects of imperialism not only on the troubled but on the teasers, as well. However, is more than one person’s fascinating narrative about the beginning of an awareness. Although “Shooting an Elephant” catches a universal experience of going against one’s own humanity at the cost of a part of that humanity. Jonathan Swift has turned his mind to the constant problems of Ireland hunger and overpopulation and come up with an ingenious solution: sponsored cannibalism. Therefore, Swift’s anger drains through in his detailed plan for breeding Irish children and selling one-year-olds as meat.

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The purpose of “Shooting an Elephant” was to show that sometimes people do things they know aren’t the right decision just to impress everyone else. The officer felt that,“It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him” (Orwell 4). As he shot the elephant he

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There are numerous themes in this short story such as British imperialism and colonial resentment however the most prominent theme in this story is fear of humiliation and the effect peer- pressure has on an individual. The setting of Burma helps work with this theme as it provides an area for the plot to take place and develop. After marching miles to the destination of the elephant, a crowd had surrounded George Orwell and encourages Orwell to kill the elephant. George Orwell is compelled to kill the once ravaging elephant due to the fact that Orwell wants to avoid looking like a fool. George Orwell is willing to sacrifice his role of doing the right thing and fulfilling the Burmese wishes in order to save himself from

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Orwell conveniences the reader that imperialism has not only a negative impact on those run by imperialist, but also degrades those holding the power of an imperialist. Like other works Orwell has written they too have expressed his opinion on social and political aspects. In “Shooting an Elephant,” readers can recognize his opinions on imperialism through the narrator’s display of pathos. Orwell over and over expresses his hatred, fear, doubt, and distress for authority of imperialist. The narrator states “As for the job [he] was doing, [he] hated it more bitterly than [he] perhaps make clear.”

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In his essay, “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell describes his experience of killing an elephants when he was an officer in Burma. He explains how the local Burmese hated him and saw him as the authority of the repressive white British. He mentions that he also had the same feeling about the local Burmese. Even though he hated the Thyestean imperialism but he also hated what he called the yellow-faced and evil-spirted Burmese people. One day, he was told that an elephant was destroying the bazaar and killing people.

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This narrative piece is an effective expository technique that describes the narrator’s thoughts and tone. Orwell uses oxymoron such as “grinning corpse” and paradox phrases such as “the story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”. Another paradox statement is shown in “I perceived this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”. Orwell’s decisions were briskly altered as he was deciding on whether to kill the elephant or not. His mind altered from “I ought not to shoot him” to “I had got to do it” and also to “But I did not want to shoot the elephant”.

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It is difficult to make decisions when your actions speak for more than yourself. In Shooting an Elephant, George orwell relays a tale where he is the victim of peer pressure not only from the Imperial regime, but also the native people. Orwell was an Imperial policeman who disagreed with the Imperial regime. He secretly was on the Burmese people side, but they saw him as an embodiment of the establishment that oppresses them. Orwell’s intention was to show the negative effects of peer pressure.

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In the short story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell, a young man experiences a case of influence and peer pressure like none other. An English police officer is placed in a Burmese area and assigned to protect the people there. The people of this town are not fond of the outsider and treat him very poorly. In order for the officer to gain a kind of reassurance from the Burmese people, he must find a way to make them happy. In the story, George Orwell uses imagery and characterization in order to demonstrate how a rite of passage can be forced upon a person in order for that person to obtain their place in society.

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Shooting An Elephant The story “ Shooting An Elephant” by George Orwell is about a man who lives in Bruma as a police officer. Bruma is under British control and they are not aloud to own guns. Being a British officer, the narrator was aloud to own one at the time. The story is told in first person, as readers learn about a traumatizing experience the narrator had in his past.

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