Comparing Orwell's Shooting An Elephant And The English Language

In Orwell’s essays Shooting an Elephant and Politics and the English Language, he uses two different modes of writing to convey similar emotions. In both essays, Orwell’s emotions can be described as defiant towards the current state of the world as a socialist. In Shooting an Elephant before the incident involving the elephant, Orwell already gives his stance on British imperialism by showing the emotional discourse between him and the Burmese locals. He then uses the elephant as a metaphor for a peaceful group of people, like the Burmese, while he uses himself and the Burmese villagers as a metaphor for the British. The act of him killing the elephant as a result of the pressure from the villagers is akin to the British colonizing Burma and taking away their lives and freedom. In Politics

In the case of fascism, as a strong opponent, he states that thought corruption from fascist leaders will bleed into the language and that same language will further corrupt the minds of the public and leave them more vulnerable. While both of these essays are similar in their identity as political essays they both have a major difference lies in their conclusions. The conclusion of Shooting an Elephant is Orwell falling prey to the pressure of the villagers and killing the elephant. Similar to his own life, Orwell did contribute to British imperialism by joining in on his family business and becoming an imperial officer, possibly just to “avoid looking like a fool” as he did in Burma (4). However, in the conclusion of Politics and the English Language, he provides the reader tools to fight back against the pressure of bad thoughts and writing. These differences in conclusions of fairly similar messages were likely to come from Politics essay being present and Shooting an Elephant being in the past, possibly reflecting on a