George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is an anecdote detailing an impressionable event from his time as an imperial police officer in British India. As most high schoolers who have read Orwell's works before, we all know his obsession to exploit the pure unfairness and cruelty of imperial and communist governments. Having grown up within the workings of Imperial Britain, he knew what it was all really like. I always questioned why he had such an obvious hate and animosity toward such governments, and this short story clearly spells the reasons out. Now my foggy view of Eric Blair's own political views has cleared substantially.
I've always enjoyed Orwell's style of writing. The way that he paints a crystal clear, dreary picture of a tyrannical world in an enjoyable, fictional language. His usage of description in this story is different from that of his other works however. With each deep, vivid description, there is an explanation of how that particular scene affected him either in that moment, in the future, or both. I didn't come across any obvious figurative language, when he usually uses metaphors and similes in his writing.
1) Orwell gives two adjoining reasons for shooting the elephant. The first he mentions in the middle of page 288, "The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East." He felt the literal need to commit this naturally immoral act because of his people's role in this region. The Burmans saw the English as an irritating authority, but an authority nonetheless. And in this case, they abused that authority to almost test this single English man. Aside from the fact that Orwell already hated his country and what it stood for, he first realized here how pointless the presence of the British authority was. How unnecessary it was. His second reasoning stems from the first, but gets more personal, "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool." He didn't want to look like a fool representing his country and authority. But he also didn't want to look like a coward by himself. The eyes of a eager, excited two thousand townspeople has quite the strong effect. Especially on a man in his position.
2) The dictionary definition of Imperialism is, "a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force." In this area of Burma, the British Empire at the time had taken over authority. They had extended their power by literal military force, and held that power by keeping the military present, which is where Orwell came in. He learned to hate what the empire had made it's soldiers become, so basically he disliked everything that it did and stood for. With the authority officers like him had to carry out, they became hollow, soulless machines that conformed to wherever they were assigned. "He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the 'natives', and so in every crisis he has got to do what the 'natives' expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it."
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