George Orwell Shooting An Elephant

George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” is a “perplexing” account of life in India during times of British rule, through the eyes of a European Police Officer. His experience contains matters of oppression, conflict, and feelings that help to reveal the true, evil nature of Imperialism. Oppression is one of the faces of evil in this essay. The first instance of oppression is when we learn the conditions of being a Burman. The Burmese people, due to the British, live in huts and are overruled by British Imperialists. They are kept poor and weak so that the British can maintain power and control. The criminals are locked in filthy cages and beaten. Orwell wrote, on page 323, “The wretched prisoners

First, Orwell had very strong, mixed feelings about the Burmese. On one hand he wanted to see their freedom, but on another he resented them for how he was treated and sometimes wanted nothing more than revenge. He describes this on page 323. “With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny… with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts.” Secondly, Orwell felt highly manipulated by the Burmese and one can assume that the other officers felt similarly. He had to fill a role as a policeman. He had to seem unafraid and live up to the expectations of the people. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone or look like a fool in front of anybody, especially a Burman. On page 327, he says, “…but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro…” Lastly, the shooting of an Elephant made many people unhappy, especially the owner. He says on page 330, “The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing… Among the Europeans opinion was divided…” The young said he was wrong for what he did but the elders disagreed with that point of