George Orwell Shooting An Elephant Summary
Has anyone ever called you an animal? Have you been compared to a sloth because you were lazy, or a mouse because you were quiet? In my Language Arts class, we read the book “Touching Spirit Bear” by Ben Mikaelsen. In this novel, a troubled teenage boy named Cole is banished to an island to find and heal his soul after he severely beats a kid. During his stay on the island, Cole realizes that he is similar to several different animals.
As an opponent of political and social injustice, author George Orwell shows his disapproval for political corruption and political injustice through the display of pathos. Likewise, in “Shooting an Elephant,” readers detect George Orwell’s subjective opinions on imperialism through persuasion using pathos. Throughout the essay, the narrator uses expressions and feelings of fear, hatred, anxiety, doubt, and distress at the fact that he is in a position of no authority to inform the audience of his disapproval.
First of two start of, the most rhetorically influential element of this story is the authors background. While George Orwell is a well-known for being an English author and journalist, he is very famous for being a political satirist. In this story, the audiences can see Orwell’s personal opinions on social and political views. In “Shooting an Elephant,” readers detected Orwell’s opinions on imperialism through the narrator’s display of pathos. Throughout the story, the narrator shows feelings of hatred, doubt, fear, anxiety, and distress at the fact that he is in a position of mocked authority.
Grann and Orwell's writing uses empathy to create perspective, putting the reader in the place and mind of the protagonist. In Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell, the narrator is faced with the task of killing an elephant that has gone wild. He does not want to kill the elephant, yet the roaring crowd leads him to ending the animal's life. He even calls the elephant grandmotherly. To shoot a peaceful, living creature seems wrong.
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.
Moreover, “Shooting an elephant” by George Orwell was published in 1936 (New Writing). This essay describes the experience of an
Romeo & Juliet Through the Centuries He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it anymore obvious? There have been remakes, upon remakes of Romeo and Juliet’s ‘love story’ throughout the centuries since it was written. A remake from the early 60’s is the movie/musical West Side Story, a tale with Maria and Tony featuring gangs and violence. Another more lighthearted version Gnomeo and Juliet, an animated film from 2011 featuring garden gnomes and an unsurprising lack of suicide.
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
In “Shooting an Elephant”, author and narrator George Orwell thinks back to the time that he served as an officer in Burma, where during his five years of service, he is constantly bullied by the civilians he is supposed to protect. Orwell is ruefully continuing his days among the people when suddenly an elephant gets loose in the town, killing one person and trampling a few food carts. As an officer, it is Orwell’s responsibility to protect the people, and so he sets out after the loose elephant, rifle in tow with a growing crowd behind him. It is because of that crowd of people, with thousands of eyes boring into his back with anticipation, does he realize that he has to shoot the elephant. It takes five direct hits to take it down, and even after multiple other direct hits, “...it took him half an hour to die.”
3) Orwell initially hesitates to kill the elephant because the elephant was not hurting anyone. In fact, the elephant was calmly eating food, while ignoring the crowd of people. Also, Orwell knew the elephant’s owner would be angry if his or her elephant got shot and died. The reason being, the elephant is worth much more alive than dead. However, Orwell decides to kill the elephant because the crowd of people were anticipating on him to shoot the elephant.
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.
This narrative piece is an effective expository technique that describes the narrator’s thoughts and tone. Orwell uses oxymoron such as “grinning corpse” and paradox phrases such as “the story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”. Another paradox statement is shown in “I perceived this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”. Orwell’s decisions were briskly altered as he was deciding on whether to kill the elephant or not. His mind altered from “I ought not to shoot him” to “I had got to do it” and also to “But I did not want to shoot the elephant”.
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.
George Orwell held a unique perspective on Britain’s involvement in Burma. Through his own experiences in Burma, he developed an inner struggle between following orders and opposing imperialism, that he expressed in the story Shooting an Elephant. Orwell was born under the name Eric Blair in colonial India. As an adult, he joined the Imperial Police stationed in Burma, where he soon discovered a conflict brewing within himself. He was naturally a reflective person, analyzing what he saw to be obvious disparities in the two sides of an Imperialistic relationship.
Orwell’s vivid description of the elephant’s rampage, “The people said that the elephant had come suddenly
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