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George Orwell Shooting An Elephant Response Paper

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Recommended: Essay analysis on "shooting an elephant" by george orwell

Prior to prominence, George Orwell was a police officer in Moulmein, Burma. During this time, Moulmein is under British control and Orwell writes a story about his duty and how he struggled with the choice to be in accordance with the crowd and shoot an escaped elephant roaming the lands or follow his morals and do what he believed was right and wait for the animal control to rescue him. Choosing to go against his morals, saying it was peer pressure and not feeling ashamed is a struggle that disregards his own ethics. Morality and Colonialism are reoccurring themes in Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant. These themes create conflict within Orwell because he claims to be an anti-imperialist and sides with the Burmese. This struggle creates otherness …show more content…

His acts make his suffering worse. In this quote “But in reality, I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind me” (Orwell 3) Orwell tells how he is used by the people to shoot the elephant. Orwell promotes the image of a white savior, “A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened” (Orwell 4) by establishing his moral superiority over the Burmese while yet showing sympathy for them. Within this, it creates conflict for Orwell and how his otherness between what he thinks is morally right separates him from the colonized and the colonizer. Which results in him being the draw …show more content…

Relating the fact that the elephant, like a colonized population, has its liberty restricted, and it becomes violently rebellious as a response to being enclosed. The citizens represent the colonizer in pressuring Orwell to shoot the elephant when he knows it is against his morals. Orwell is stuck in between the colonizer and colonized and has the liberty to do something about it yet falls short and is sucked in with the colonized. “I perceived at this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys” (Orwell 5). The freedom of the colonized is stopped by the choice of each colonized and the people who hold a higher power to change

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In the beginning of the essay, the elephant manifests an unbending tantrum. The rampage kills a local man and destroys much of the village. Orwell, by using a tumultuous elephant destroying the village, is a reference to imperialism and its disastrous effects. Orwell writes, “He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side… (Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.)” to show how imperialism’s devastation was the opposite of the initial extension of Britain 's influence through colonization. You can see in Orwell 's writing the diction he uses such as “crucified” and “devilish” in the essay show that the religious influence of imperialism takes a large toll on the culture of the Burmese people and British officers there.

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Orwell was drowning in their excitement. The metaphor comparing Orwell to a conjuror and the simile comparing the Burmans to a crowd watching such conjuror add to the underlying message of the harm filled imperialistic society they all lived in. Orwell was about to perform a trick,

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The essay explores an apparent paradox about the behavior of Europeans, who supposedly have power over their colonial subjects. Orwell focuses on one important incident. (shooting the elephant) The whole essay is more than Orwell’s killing of the elephant: the whole incident was, he tells us, a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act.’ He cared how people would see him if he did not kill the elephant.

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Well known author and journalist, George Orwell, in his essay, Shooting an Elephant, describes his experiences as a Policeman in Moulmein, Burma during European Imperialism. Orwell’s purpose is to convey the ideal that what is right and what is accepted don’t always align. He adopts a remorseful tone in order to convey to the reader the weight of his actions. By looking at George Orwell’s use of imagery and figurative language, one can see his strongly conflicting opinions on Imperialism. Orwell begins his essay, Shooting an Elephant, by explaining the actions of the Burmese people and by expressing his contempt for imperialism.

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The short memoir of “Shooting the Elephant” tells the story of George Orwell’s experience as a british policeman in imperialized Burma. His experience is made up of anger, hate and resentment of conditions he feels is out of his control. Orwell makes many revelations in this story, one of them being, “when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.” Orwell also claims, “He wears a mask; and his face grows to fit it.” These statements possess much validity and can be supported in multiple ways.

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There are numerous themes in this short story such as British imperialism and colonial resentment however the most prominent theme in this story is fear of humiliation and the effect peer- pressure has on an individual. The setting of Burma helps work with this theme as it provides an area for the plot to take place and develop. After marching miles to the destination of the elephant, a crowd had surrounded George Orwell and encourages Orwell to kill the elephant. George Orwell is compelled to kill the once ravaging elephant due to the fact that Orwell wants to avoid looking like a fool. George Orwell is willing to sacrifice his role of doing the right thing and fulfilling the Burmese wishes in order to save himself from

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George Orwell’s experience described in his essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, taught him that after you begin to imperialize, you are sometimes forced to do things against your will to earn humanity. He knew he had no intention to kill the elephant out of cold blood, for the thought of how the elephant’s mahout would feel when he returned from his journey only to find his animal dead. However, the elephant was wild during his must period and was doing outrageous things that was harming the people and the environment of Lower Burma. Orwell knew that he was not well-liked by his fellow Burmans and, therefore could not bear to fail with the face of the crowd glaring at him. The elephant in the story is not only seen as an animal that would be seen

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In "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell draws on his personal experiences in Burma to write an essay about the shooting of an elephant that has been terrorizing a bazaar, destroying huts, and even murdering a man. When Orwell discovers the elephant seems to have calmed down after experiencing Musth, and is padding his knees with and eating grass. Orwell is presented with the decision of wither or not to shoot the elephant. Orwell is in a position in which his has to choose between his life and the life of an elephant. He has to think about all of the people behind him, who once despised him, even spat on him and his fellow Europeans, but now that he wielded a gun stood behind him.

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Reading Response “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell is a story about what he went through when he was a policeman in Burma, and why he shot an elephant, “solely to avoid looking [like] a fool.” “[He] was hated by a large numbers of people,” and in a way tortured for things that he didn’t even understand what he was doing. He perceived that him and his other european cohorts were doing the right thing, but he also hated that fact that they were there. At first I assumed that this essay was going to be about just killing an elephant for fun and how it made him feel.

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Zachary Conners SUNY – Eng. 12 Mrs. O’Malley December 15, 2014 “Shooting an Elephant” is a persuasive rhetorical piece written by George Orwell used to describe Orwell’s feelings about imperialism. Orwell uses pathos, logos, and ethos to convey his feelings towards imperialism and how destructive it can be. Born 1903, George Orwell, novelist, essayist, and critic, was best known for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four. Son of a British servant, Orwell spent most of his days in India, where his father had been stationed.

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Shooting an Elephant Unexpected decisions that one is pushed to make can suffer make one. In George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant” his decision to shoot on elephant is a more dilemma. Every individual must make troublesome judgments over the span of regular day to day existence. Choices that appear to be minor at the time may influence one's life for quite a long time. Some of the time the decision is whether to meet the desires of others or to meet the desires of the soul.

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In his essay, “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell describes his experience of killing an elephants when he was an officer in Burma. He explains how the local Burmese hated him and saw him as the authority of the repressive white British. He mentions that he also had the same feeling about the local Burmese. Even though he hated the Thyestean imperialism but he also hated what he called the yellow-faced and evil-spirted Burmese people. One day, he was told that an elephant was destroying the bazaar and killing people.

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Orwell begins his piece of writing with an extremely weak character that has been mocked and laughed at by the people of Burma. Orwell depicts his job situation in which he was “stuck”

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Throughout “Shooting An Elephant” , Orwell’s narrative style brings out internal and external conflicts that are relatable in society today. The narrator faces multiple internal and external conflicts. One external conflict being the Burmese and how they mock him because he is a representative of the British Empire, but he will do what it takes to show them he is not a fool. "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

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" Shooting an Elephant " written by George Orwell describes an ugly nature of imperialism. The story is about one European police officer who served in Moulmein, in lower Burma. While he was doing his job he faced many difficulties because of local people's anti- European attitude. This negative attitude overcomplicated his job. He had already realized that he wanted to get rid of his job as soon as possible.

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