Orwell Vs. Wallace Analysis

Both Orwell and Wallace utilize humans’ understanding and relationship to animals to bring their arguments forward in their essays. Both authors describe how humans tend to brutalize animals for humans’ personal gain. In Orwell’s essay, the author talks about a chained up, tame elephant that was shot to death with a “.44 Winchester, [a gun] much too small to kill an elephant” because the elephant “was ravaging the bazaar” (Orwell 437). Likewise, in Wallace’s essay, Wallace expounds on the happenings of the Maine Lobster Festival and about how lobsters are boiled alive and killed for humans’ culinary enjoyment at home but especially during said festival. Consequently, both authors address the abuse and unnecessary killing of animals solely for another species to selfishly benefit.

Orwell centers his essay around the shooting of an elephant, when the elephant really represents British imperialism. Orwell uses the ravaging of the bazaar to represent the British empire ravaging Burma. This contrasts with Wallace’s essay, as in Wallace’s essay, he plainly elaborates on the debate whether it is “all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for [humans’] gustatory pleasure” (Wallace 9). Nevertheless, the arguments the authors propose are not outright impassioned arguments for animal rights. Rather, the arguments presented are mere descriptions of the mistreatment and death of an elephant and a lobster. Though, a reader may draw his or her own conclusion and assume a position on animal rights after reading the essays of Orwell and