In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell uses harsh Irony and clever metaphors to illustrate how everything is not always as it appears. The short story is like Aesop’s fable that reveals how Orwell became disillusioned with British imperialism. He uses this cynical and grim tale from his own life to bring others to his same conclusions. Foremost, George Orwell’s use of harsh irony throughout his story alludes to false appearances.
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.
Within his essay, he focused on why he had to kill the elephant and also his feelings prior to and after killing the elephant. Orwell was pressured into killing the elephant. He was already not accepted in the town but he knew if he killed the elephant that he would gain respect from the natives. Carol Franks mentions in her essay “Despite
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” Wake Tech: English 111 Reader, edited by Wayde Vickrey, et al., 2nd ed. , Hayden Mcneil, 2017, pp. 191-197. The author in this narrative works as a police officer for a town in Burma. He is hated by the towns people and is often harassed for serving the British Empire.
He felt his only choices were to either shoot the elephant and give the people what they wanted or to not shoot the elephant and be ridiculed. He was providing entertainment as well as meat for those that followed, but Orwell expresses that he did not want to shoot the elephant. However, against his better judgement he fell into their expectation, feeling pressured, and shot the elephant.
Toward the ending Orwell says “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that i had done it solely to avoid looking a fool”(6). But in the end he killed the elephant so he can gain respect otherwise.
In Between Desires and Expectations In the narrative, “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell writes about his memory of shooting an elephant, when he was a police officer in Moulmein, Lower Burma and shows the nature of imperialism. Firstly, he was not going to kill the elephant, because this “monster” elephant, who was destroying the city, was completely peaceful and calm, when he found it. However, the locals were expecting him to kill the elephant and put him under the pressure. He had inner conflict between his will to win the sympathy of Burmese and his sorrow of hiding his true intentions. He shoots the elephant at the end of his inner conflict in order not to look like a fool to the locals, to show his feelings as an Anglo-Indian in Burma and as a European to be the hero of the locals.
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.
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.
