George Orwell Shooting An Elephant

The Elephant “In a job like that you see the dirty work of the empire in close quarters”. Imagine being in a predicament that you go into blindlessly thinking that everything is first rate and second to none, but then you come to the realization that everything you thought you knew was corrupt and a lie. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” he explains how he comes to despise the British empire. Orwell begins to see the many different strategies used to oppress the Burmese people by the British empire first hand and this ultimately causes him to develop a hatred for the British empire. In this essay Orwell is trying to show that in life people pressure other people to do things that they don’t want to do, which can lead to very

Due to Orwell’s military station he is automatically hated by the people of the Burma. The Burmese people show great hatred and disgust towards Orwell by tormenting him at every chance they get. This causes a huge problem for orwell because he begins to realize that the British empire systematically oppress the Burmese people and due to his military role he feels somewhat responsible and he begins to develop a growing hatred toward the British empire. One day an incident takes place. An elephant escapes from its chains and is threatening the villagers of burma. The only one capable of containing this animal and saving the Burmese people is George Orwell because the villagers didn’t have any weapons. Orwell knows that he may have to kill the animal because it is what is expected of him due to his station, this causes conflict because Orwell does not want to kill the creature but he also does not want to seem weak in front of the taunting Burmese people. Orwell is faced with this huge dilemma and choses to kill the elephant to prevent being humiliated by the people of

He uses imagery depict the various things the burmese people did that lead him to kill the elephant. Orwell uses imagery to show the taunting of the Burmese people when he states “When a nimble Burman tripped me upon the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter”(II.7-9). And “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”(II.9-11). The imagery in this essay is to mainy show how the Burmese people treated Orwell and how their taunting towards him made him think that he had to kill the elephant to avoid great