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Orwell's shooting an elephant analysis
Orwell's shooting an elephant analysis
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In the short story Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell a Police Officer who is not from Burma is forced to go out and kill a wild elephant. Orwell whom is the main character is not from Burma and when he goes about his quest to hunt down and kill the elephant he goes about the actual killing of the elephant. The local people begin to dislike him because of the way he went about putting the animal down. This story is often interpreted as an interpretation of how orwell viewed the Indian Imperial police. This story Follows the quest motif to the letter; every aspect of this story seems to fit in with the motif.
First of two start of, the most rhetorically influential element of this story is the authors background. While George Orwell is a well-known for being an English author and journalist, he is very famous for being a political satirist. In this story, the audiences can see Orwell’s personal opinions on social and political views. In “Shooting an Elephant,” readers detected Orwell’s opinions on imperialism through the narrator’s display of pathos. Throughout the story, the narrator shows feelings of hatred, doubt, fear, anxiety, and distress at the fact that he is in a position of mocked authority.
Even though Orwell did commit the crime of shooting an elephant, throughout the story he used ethos, pathos, and figurative language to convince the audience if given the opportunity he would never shoot an elephant again because the elephant represents the innocence of people. First and foremost, Orwell establishes his ethos. As stated in Everything’s an Argument, ethos is described as the author's credibility. He establishes his ethos right from the beginning of the story when he states he works for the British but he despises them.
Well known author and journalist, George Orwell, in his essay, Shooting an Elephant, describes his experiences as a Policeman in Moulmein, Burma during European Imperialism. Orwell’s purpose is to convey the ideal that what is right and what is accepted don’t always align. He adopts a remorseful tone in order to convey to the reader the weight of his actions. By looking at George Orwell’s use of imagery and figurative language, one can see his strongly conflicting opinions on Imperialism. Orwell begins his essay, Shooting an Elephant, by explaining the actions of the Burmese people and by expressing his contempt for imperialism.
An Analysis of the Poems (Three messages from “Shooting an Elephant”, and “No Witchcraft for Sale”) People do not always make the choices that they should have. Often times, people like to choose the path that is not laid out in front of them, but the one that is further than where they are going. George Orwell and Doris Lessing really put an emphasis on this topic. In George Orwell’s story, “Shooting an Elephant”, he talks mainly about the British people of the time that he was an officer. His type of person (Burmese), was not very highly liked by the British (the rulers at the time).
This is shown through their similar opinions on death. In Shooting an Elephant, Orwell is forced to shoot an elephant because it went on a rampage and killed an unskilled worker. According to most laws, something that kills something else is usually killed itself. This law of an eye for an eye has been used by humans since around the year 4 A.D. with Hammurabi’s
In George Orwell 's short story titled “Shooting an Elephant” presented an event that changed a countries civilization. George’s life in Burma, and the prejudice placed by the people he oppressed inspired his writing through the uses of setting, style, and theme. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” Orwell no specific event influenced this piece rather it was an accumulation of many small events of prejudice and hate by an opposing group of
“Shooting an Elephant” and “...More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence” analysis George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” centers around a police officer in Burma, located in Southeast Asia, who is harassed in multiple ways. However, one day an elephant went wild and rampaged through the bazaar. Being an officer, he was requested to come to the aid of the people so he hopped onto a pony to see the elephant. After going against his own morals he shot the elephant multiple times, causing it a slow agonizing death. Thomas C. Foster’s chapter “...
The narrator experiences three conflicts: one with the British Empire because of its unjust occupation of Burma, one with the Burmese because of their mockery of him as a representative of the British Empire, and one with himself in his struggle with his conscience and self-image. In literary terms, the first two are external conflicts and the third is an internal conflict. All three conflicts complicate his ability to make objective, clear-headed decisions. In Orwell’s story Shooting an elephant, three major things come up; he realizes who actually is in power, how he saw the British rule ending, and how he was rooting for the Burmese people.
Orwell was forced to serve as a police officer in Burma and did not enjoy his position. He expresses his situation with words such as “unbreakable tyranny” (1), “evil-spirited” (1), and “beasts” (1). The words “unbreakable tyranny” (1) explain the exact political situation the country of Burma is in. Despite that situation, Orwell was in fear of their judgement and was having difficulty making his own decisions. A resentful tone is shown because he had become obsessed with the natives’ view of him and continued to do his job because of this.
This narrative piece is an effective expository technique that describes the narrator’s thoughts and tone. Orwell uses oxymoron such as “grinning corpse” and paradox phrases such as “the story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes”. Another paradox statement is shown in “I perceived this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys”. Orwell’s decisions were briskly altered as he was deciding on whether to kill the elephant or not. His mind altered from “I ought not to shoot him” to “I had got to do it” and also to “But I did not want to shoot the elephant”.
Orwell wants to convey the message by explaining that imperialism is evil. It shames people, reducing them to the low status in their own country. Also, it pushes people into making immoral or unethical decisions to maintain their superiority. In “Shooting an Elephant," the narrator acts against his conscience to save face for himself and his fellow imperialists. He was a European policeman in Burma, and the Burmese feeling toward all Europeans was extraordinarily negative, and he knew that the Burmese people disliked him.
Throughout “Shooting An Elephant” , Orwell’s narrative style brings out internal and external conflicts that are relatable in society today. The narrator faces multiple internal and external conflicts. One external conflict being the Burmese and how they mock him because he is a representative of the British Empire, but he will do what it takes to show them he is not a fool. "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
George Orwell held a unique perspective on Britain’s involvement in Burma. Through his own experiences in Burma, he developed an inner struggle between following orders and opposing imperialism, that he expressed in the story Shooting an Elephant. Orwell was born under the name Eric Blair in colonial India. As an adult, he joined the Imperial Police stationed in Burma, where he soon discovered a conflict brewing within himself. He was naturally a reflective person, analyzing what he saw to be obvious disparities in the two sides of an Imperialistic relationship.
(pg. 322) and “As a police officer, I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.” (pg. 322) The Burmese showed him no respect, but it wasn’t to a point where crime was common. Even though Orwell was the ring leader of the Burmese crowd, he didn’t call the shots. Orwell says he “had no intention of shooting the elephant.”
