Ethos In Shooting An Elephant

“Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.” This quote from Buddhism depicts the idea of the short story, Shooting an Elephant, by George Orwell. In the story Orwell committed the crime of shooting an elephant, which legally he had the right to do, but morally felt guilty about killing an innocent animal. According to Everything's an Argument, a correct causal argument needs to have a claim, warrant, and evidence. 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. This showed the audience his state of mind at the time and helps support his claim, “ when a white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.” Another example of the ethos that was used was the fact he used multiple Latin

According to Everything's an Argument, pathos is defined as using emotional appeal to persuade an audience. An example of how Orwell used pathos to persuade the audience is used very strong words such as “oppressor”, “tyrant”, “savage”, and “crucified” which evoke emotions in the audience. He often referred to the British as oppressor instead of the ruler. Since Orwell used such heavily connotated words, the audience was able to understand how he felt much clearer and it showed he put a lot of thought into his story. The precision in his words helps convince the reader he really did evaluate his whole life after the incident where he shot the