Shooting An Elephant Symbolism

Within Orwell’s short story Shooting an Elephant, an intimate character study is depicted alongside class disparity, metaphorical symbolism, and fundamentally disagreeing with the job at hand. Orwell portrays himself as the furthest thing from a company man, working for the British Empire in Burma as a police officer. The Burmese could not think less of him, and the mentality spreads from monks laughing at him patrolling the street, to bullying in a recreational football match. The great irony here lies in Orwell not trusting the integrity of his superiors, empathizing with the villagers he lives alongside. His greatest test emerges when an elephant breaks free and begins rampaging certain parts of town, resulting in a wake of destruction

In the second paragraph of the story he states: “…I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British… In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters (Orwell).” The village was another hollow remnant of the Empire’s tyranny, and with the Narrator being the face of these actions, was the brunt of all the anguish and melancholia. He could never relax or ingratiate himself into society, even though everyone was truly a kindred spirit. As the only protector of the people on scene, he was tasked with avenging the death and previous chaos. The villagers were unanimous in their silence: shoot the elephant. Their numbers grew in the thousands and this was finally his chance to eradicate the racial barrier and shrug off the cloak of his employer, proving he was no cog in the imperialist machine. Time turned elastic as the climax of the story settles into a simple decision; shoot the menace and become accepted, or do the right thing. Killing the elephant is representative of the death of reputation Orwell carries, but for him it was simply a chance not to be publicly ridiculed again, reinforced in the story’s last