“Shooting an Elephant” and the Struggle of Being Yourself Which one would you prefer: To kill an elephant or to kill yourself? Probably you have never faced with this question in your life. But, there is a person, who did. In the narrative, Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell describes his adventures as a police officer in Moulmein, Lower Burma and shows it as a nature of imperialism. In spite of his hatred towards the British tyrants in Burma, when it comes to the shooting the elephant, he had inner conflict between his will to win the sympathy of Burmese and his sorrow of hiding his true intentions and struggle with the morals. He shoots the elephant at the end of his inner conflict in order not to look like a fool to the locals, to show …show more content…
There are many examples that use to define the word “desire” but it is not easy to explain the theory of it. Desire appears in the particular state of mind and generally there is no reasons for it. According to the article “Desire” by Tim Schroeder, there are many theories of desire, such as action-based, pleasure-based, attention-based, etc. Elizabeth Anscombe, the British analytic philosopher gives an explanation to desire in a sentence that, “The primitive sign of wanting is trying to get”. Specifically, her theory is that if an individual desires something, it means that he/she have done an act to bring this desire to him/her. We can give an example of George Orwell in his narrative, “Shooting an Elephant”. If he didn't take the rifle and search for the elephant with the thousands of people watching him, then he wouldn't be in the situation to desire not to kill an animal and he would simply avoid this hard dilemma to happen. On the other hand, according to the philosophers, if people get the think they desire, no matter if it is bad or good for them, then they will enjoy having it and if they do not get it it will make them upset in any case. Regarding this and our previous example, if George Orwell was still not …show more content…
If everyone would follow just his/her own desires and ignore all the expectations, it would lead to chaos. Freedom is when you don't have anything left to think about and doing whatever you want gives you the kind of freedom that you will not think about anyone. Besides, if everyone would follow the expectations and stereotypes and forget about the self desires, it would lead to the creation of the world with full of dehumanized people – robots, depending on each other. “To be yourself in a world hat is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment” as the essayist and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson said. The key is to be yourself and to care about yourself. But the true combination of all the reasonable expectations and desires will lead to the result that will make everyone happy, including the individual