In the passages How to Tell a True War Story by Tim O’Brien and Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, there are many similarities and differences between the two passages, but the differences exceed the similarities. While both sections talk about a shooter, human death, and animal death; they differentiate in the shooters motives, pacing, and narration structure. Just as How to Tell a True War Story has the death of Curt Lemon, Shooting an Elephant also has the death of the coolie. In Tim O’Brien’s story, Curt Lemon is killed by a boobytrapped bomb in which O’Brien leads himself to believe is the sunlight. The passage goes on to describe the events leading up to Lemon’s death and how O’Brien believes that Curt Lemon would have thought the sunlight killed him and not the 105-round, “It was not the sunlight.
In the beginning of, “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell establishes that the separation of power in colonial Burma resides more than just black-and-white. While it seems he holds symbolic authority and military supremacy as a British police officer, Orwell is still powerless to stop the hatred and abuse he receives from the oppressed Burmese. This hatred, that may be perceived, will become an influential reason as to why he would feel guilty regardless if he would have have or haven’t taken responsibility for his actions. Orwell, in the beginning, views the elephant as,”... not a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone ‘must’”, but he later realizes, that the elephant itself, represents more than just an animal. Orwell is able to better comprehend
George Orwell, English novelist and critic, writes the essay “Shooting an Elephant.” Throughout the essay he shares a story from when he was a subdivisional police officer in Burma. He explains his actions and thoughts throughout his ordeal with an elephant that became “feral.” When Orwell finally tracks down and finds the elephant he strongly thought that "... [he] did not in the least want to shoot him.
Orwell was a British police officer living in Burma at the time. A tame elephant had gone wild and escaped from its cage. It killed one of the Burman’s and then ran away to a field when it began grazing. The elephant was no longer
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
George Orwell’s experience described in his essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, taught him that after you begin to imperialize, you are sometimes forced to do things against your will to earn humanity. He knew he had no intention to kill the elephant out of cold blood, for the thought of how the elephant’s mahout would feel when he returned from his journey only to find his animal dead. However, the elephant was wild during his must period and was doing outrageous things that was harming the people and the environment of Lower Burma. Orwell knew that he was not well-liked by his fellow Burmans and, therefore could not bear to fail with the face of the crowd glaring at him. The elephant in the story is not only seen as an animal that would be seen
To support this Orwell tells of the hardship he faces as being not only a white man in an Indian society, but a cop as well, to help convince the audience that imperialism needs to end before it leads to many country’s demise, including his own. Orwell did not just give a general description of what happened he made it so the reader could feel what he felt, see what he saw, and experience what he experienced. Way of the ways is through his graphic imagery of the story, including the moments after he shot the elephant, “his legs collapsed beneath him…” describing the pain and suffering the elephant went through as he took each shot; this strong imagery strengthens the emotions of anger and sadness in the reader to better his argument against
Criticism started to beat down his self-confidence, and made him rethink what a police officer was. Orwell describes in text how he felt he was an “obvious target.” While everything was going on, he felt baited whenever it was safe to do so.
In his essay, “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell describes his experience of killing an elephants when he was an officer in Burma. He explains how the local Burmese hated him and saw him as the authority of the repressive white British. He mentions that he also had the same feeling about the local Burmese. Even though he hated the Thyestean imperialism but he also hated what he called the yellow-faced and evil-spirted Burmese people. One day, he was told that an elephant was destroying the bazaar and killing people.
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”.
Through this incident, there is a clear examination of the empire with the eyes of a single officer and how an individual tends to behave when he fights with his own motivation to perform an action. Orwell himself never intended to kill the elephant because he believed that it was not worthy to kill a tame animal, he said in text “it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery”. Towards the end of the story he finally kills the elephant not because he did not want to come out as a coward or he wanted to, but in order to fit in the personality of a police officer. He uses elephant as a metaphor in the text to show the hatred of Burmese people, and shows how Imperialism is weakling the empire. Another metaphor used in the text was, the use of word “elephant” till the time Orwell saw the elephant lying nearly dead, however in the very end author calls it a great beast in the sentence “it seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there powerless to move, powerless to die” (ORWELL 477) just to symbolize the negative opinion of the crowd towards the animal.
As a police officer, he was able to experience the hatred of the Burmese and the evils of imperialism himself. At the beginning of his essay he talks about his life in Burma, how he “was an obvious target” of all the insults, hideous laughter, and the sneers. He provides us detailed information and uses the idea of pathos. Orwell was able to let the readers understand his side about imperialism through his own experience. Orwell’s use of logos is evident when he finally decided to kill the elephant.
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.
(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.”
The Burmans slight acts of rebellion by spitting and laughing at the British is represented by the elephant going “must”. Orwell 's self-imposed task of upholding the British Empire’s mask of control can be related to the Empire’s goal of controlling or “taming” Burmese society. Orwell is aware that his reputation reflects that of all the other Europeans. This awareness plays a role in his deciding to shoot the elephant because if he didn’t, the Burman’s would question British authority and think of them as weak (Orwell).
