Twentieth-century English writer George Orwell, in the nonfictional essay “Shooting an Elephant,” delves into “the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act” (Orwell 149). In his essay recounting his experience as a police officer in Burma, not only does Orwell capture his anguish, ambivalence and guilt from the killing of the animal, but also effectively conveys the perils of imperialism upon both the oppressed and the oppressor through deliberate use of irony, tone, and detailed physical description. “Shooting an Elephant” is almost entirely characterized by irony – from the very beginning to the end – that reveals Orwell’s ambivalence towards the natives and hollowness of British Raj in the East, …show more content…
Orwell’s description also allows the story to parallel the realities of British imperialism, the elephant representing the British empire and the coolie representing the oppressed natives. Orwell describes the death of coolie using vivid imageries blended with oxymorons, such as this sentence: “[Coolie] was lying on his belly with arms crucified…grinning with an expression of unendurable agony” (Orwell, 151). The depiction of the coolie’s death is almost too grotesque to read – though it is written so gracefully – and Orwell implicates the cruelty British empire is inflicting on the Burmese natives. During the death of the elephant, Orwell sings, “At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness…with legs sagging and head dropping…agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs” (Orwell, 154). Again, Orwell skillfully delivers every single notes of pain to the readers, using remarkable physical description, to juxtapose the language with inhumanity of the “murder” of the elephant.The death of the elephant further represents the demise of the British empire – which Orwell did not know at the time because it happened so gradually and was grand even when it was near