Shooting An Elephant Essay

A thriller action movie is on the big screen and the hero has the chance to end the villain. At first, the hero has aggressive thoughts going through his mind and wants this villain gone because he has hurt many individuals. Suddenly guilt sets in and the goodness in him can not get himself to do it. Erich From, a twentieth-century Psychoanalyst, and philosopher creates a theory explaining the reasons behind people making these decisions. A prime example is the hero using Fromms’ heteronomous obedience theory by choosing whether to end the villain because everyone wishes for him to be gone or to choose the true hero action and decide a less evil consequence. Fromm explains three different theories concerning the challenges that occur when people are

In the short story “Shooting an Elephant'' George Orwell writes about his experience of conflict between what he believed was right vs. what he did because of others. In the story, Orwell was put in the position to kill an elephant everyone believed was a threat. Orwell thought the opposite of the others saying for himself: “I did not in the least want to shoot him” (Orwell). In his heart, he did not want to kill the elephant but he had to decide which action to go through since everyone else believed it was right to kill the elephant. The most humane option for him was to keep the elephant alive. Despite the hard pressure Orwell received, he had no desire to kill the innocent animal but had to for the sake of the others. Afterward, he says, “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a fool” (Orwell). He shot the elephant solely because everyone else thought it was right to. Heteronomous obedience plays a huge part; he made his decision due on others' beliefs rather than his own. Fromm's theories are used in almost every decision being