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George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

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Analysis of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”

The argument in George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” is that imperialism can make a person go against their own beliefs in order to attain personal goals and authority. The essay discusses the evils of imperialism through Orwell’s experience with the oppressed people of Burma and his encounter with the elephant. Because of the fact that Orwell is a sub-divisional police officer in Burma he was able to establish a concrete and trustworthy evidences about the argument on imperialism. As a police officer, he was able to experience the hatred of the Burmese and the evils of imperialism himself. At the beginning of his essay he talks about his life in Burma, how he “was an obvious target” of all the insults, hideous laughter, and the sneers. He provides us detailed information and uses the idea of pathos. Orwell was able to let the readers understand his side about imperialism through his own experience.
Orwell’s use of logos is evident when he finally decided to kill the elephant. In the end he decided to …show more content…

For example, at the beginning of the essay when he talks about his situation in Burma “the sneering yellow faces of young men…got badly on my nerves” Orwell was able to express to the reader what he truly feels about his job and why he prefers to kill the elephant. Another example is in paragraph 11 he describes how the elephant looked after he was shot “[the elephant] looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though…knocking him down”, during his encounter with the elephant he provides a detailed explanation of what is happening and what he is feeling about the situation. Using this idea of pathos, it lets the reader understand what he is going through and it allows the readers to be more engaged and to feel the intensity of the story. In addition, he is also using imagery in order to fully describe and illustrate to the readers what is going

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