Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell Analysis

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. The Burmese trip and insult him while young Buddhist priests torment him. Although, he works as a police officer for the British, he secretly opposes them. Though with the constant abuse from the Burmese he inevitably starts to resent them. One morning Orwell received a call asking if he could take care of a wild elephant. He soon heads out, equipped with a small riffle, to find the elephant. When he comes across the animal, he has no intention of killing it, but he realizes that there is a massive group of people watching behind him. In this moment, he has to decide wether or not to kill the animal. Orwell realizes that if he doesn’t he will be

327-332. In this story, White reflects on childhood memories. He recalls a trip he took every summer to a lake with his family. Now grown, he has returned to the lake with his own son, staying on the same dock and cabin as White did in his childhood. The author frequently say that no time has passed; although several decades have passed, everything is the same as it was. He often experiences the feeling of being the little boy from his childhood as he watches history repeat itself through his son. For instance, there was a storm approaching, just as it was when he was a boy, the same gloomy look and feel along with the sound of thunder. His son puts on his swim trunks to go out in the rain and the author feels himself doing the same thing years before. It was in that moment that White felt a “Chill of death” come over him and he has to except that one day he will only be a memory like his own