George Orwell Shooting An Elephant

406 Words2 Pages
In George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” Tony Early’s idea of the “thing and the other thing” manifest themselves in Orwell’s need to seem sensible and his idea of what makes him look foolish. These are both affected by the culture that Orwell was raised in and the culture he was living in at the time. Though this essay starts out talking about his situation in life and his hatred of imperialism it quickly becomes clear that the main focus is on his story about shooting an elephant and his reasons for doing so. Orwell was a British police officer living in Burma at the time. A tame elephant had gone wild and escaped from its cage. It killed one of the Burman’s and then ran away to a field when it began grazing. The elephant was no longer