The basis for the essay “Shooting An Elephant” begins simple enough. Author Geiorge Orwell based the content of the story upon his past experiences as a police officer in Burma who had to put up with racial discrimination and imperialism problems in the British occupied Burma. While relating his experiences, we learn that the Burmese people go out of their way to make the British feel uncomfortable in the country. All of their ridiculing activities came to a head for Mr. Orwell on the day when an elephant went ona stampeded in Burma’s streets. As the elephant showed no signs of settling down and had already caused much structural and physical damages to the people, he was forced to shoot the elephant.
After shooting the elephant, he flees the scene, unable to watch the elephant die but cannot escape the gory details as it is discussed by everyone in the city. This adds to his inner turmoil as he comes to realize that he pities the people of Burma even though they hate the British. However, his job required him to support the imperialist rule and even as he knew the reasons for the British occupation, he also knows that by treating the people the way they did, the Brits were simply playing into the hands of the Burmese without even knowing it. Without any need for explanation, he knew that the people wanted him to kill the elephant and that they had a very good reason for doing so.
These people were hungry and the elephant would be a source of food for them. The relationship of the Burmese and the Brits could have been called dysfunctional at the time. The reason I say this is because, no matter how much they hated the Brits, the knew and looked up to their tyrants for their survival.
However, the Burmese had mastered the art of getting their way without the Brits realizing that they were surrendering to the peoples will. This is what Mr. Orwell begins to understand as he realizes that :
The people, seeing him armed with a gun, follow him and the mob goes on increasing by the time he locates the elephant. The elephant has got over his “must”, and is now peacefully pulling stalks from the field and putting them in his mouth with his trunk. Orwell has no intention of killing the elephant, but the will of over two thousand natives, seems to imprint on his mind. He is the holder of the magic weapon, which will give them their fun, and meat off the elephant. Orwell is driven to kill the elephant, inspite of his unwillingness.
There is a realization that in reality, the British are not the occupying force that they thought they were. Instead, they were merely actors in an ongoing stageplay for the citizens of Burma wherein they could dictate the actors movements and the final outcome of the stories. This was exactly what Mr. Orwell Did when he chose to kill the elephant with an audience looking over his shoulder in anticipation.
In the end, it is all about the pitfalls of imperialism. The elephant signifies the Burmese people, rampaging to become free while he, the personification of the imperialist and colonialist British, does everything to keep everything that is happening under his control. That in an imperialist set up, there is no such thing as a dominant force. Both forces are forced by circumstance to become dominant and both parties end up as broken, shallow representations of themselves in the end.
Work Cited
“Analysis of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell: All About Saving Face – Or Is It?”. associatedcontent. 2006. Web.
“Paper Trails: Cultural Imperialism from the late 19th Century as seen through Documents, Literature and Photographs”. World History Connected. 2008. Web.
“Shooting An Elephant Summary / Study Guide”. enotes. 2008. Web.
Need to analyze a theme of imperialism in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell? This essay contains the story’s summary and focuses on Shooting an Elephant symbolism.
“Shooting the elephant” is a story that explores the description of an imaginary encounter of an Englishman working in the Colonial police force in Burma. The story describes an experience with an uncontrollable and deterministic elephant. The narrator shows that he did not want to shoot the elephant but he had to do it by the will of the submissive Burmese people to bring about redemption of the people.
The study gives the breakdown of colonial nations as applied by the actors in the colonised regions. The officer describes his breakdown by expressing the mockery received for the authority. The story captures the violent reality of colonialism as the narrator unfolds the events of the actual shooting and the description of the slow and painful death of the elephant that seemed peaceful in hands of a colonial officer. The above study argues that George Orwell’s “Shooting an elephant” story represents a symbol of imperialism.
Shooting an Elephant Summary
The essay by Orwell describes the narrator’s experience. As a police officer in Burma, he is asked to kill an aggressive elephant. He does the job against his better judgment. His torment is intensified by the slow and painful death of the elephant. As Orwell spent some time in Burma, some researchers think the story may be partly autobiographical.
Shooting an Elephant Analysis
The story of shooting the elephant begins with a thoughtful introduction of the actions where the narrator, Orwell, describes the difficulty of being a colonial police officer, especially, in the middle of the twentieth century in British Burma; where many people hated him. Orwell shows how the anti-Europeans were bitter to an extent of spitting on the European women as they crossed over to the market. The sub divisional police officers would now raise more alarm as the Burmese could yell with revolting laughter.
Orwell therefore understood the hatred and thought was justified, though he admits that he would be happy if he could run through his oppressors. Johnston (375) puts that the event of shooting the elephant begins with a phone call that Orwell received about an elephant ravaging the bazaar. As a police officer and his hunting rifle, he followed the elephant to the village where the Buddhist priests had much hatred and were so many in the streets idle and jeering Europeans.
Runciman (182-183) shows that George Orwell’s book “Shooting an elephant” reflects the author as a socially conscious individual. He also says that the book served as a supplement in the days of the Burmese. Orwell shows his experience as a colonial official to both India and Burma, which were regions in the British Empire (Runciman 82-183). This study involves a colonial officer obligated to shoot a rogue elephant by the crowd from the indigenous residents for not wanting to seem a coward in the eyes of the huge crowd.
Orwell describes the event of shooting the elephant and compares it to the hostility reigning between the British Empire and the administrators, as well as the natives. In this situation, both parties have much hatred, mistrust, resentment and degrade one another and therefore the shooting represents a huge suffering expressed economically (Runciman 82-183).
Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant
“Shooting an Elephant” has created much criticism in the British literature, and especially in the political environment of modern criticism. This is because it has generated a debate on whether Orwell was legally right to condemn imperialism. Critics show insufficient condemnation and that the narrator is an agent of the British Empire who denounces the presence of the British who were corrupting their regions.
To begin with, it is important to analyse the historical background of the colonisation of Burma and describe the people of Burma. It is also necessary to provide the biography and bibliographical experience of George Orwell. This is because the author focuses on the relationship between the natives and the government. The breakdown of colonial rhetoric linking theory and practice shapes some of the phrases used by Orwell, for example, Orwell used the sea of yellow faces to display the idea of racism from the colonising people.
The author also looks at the Burmese villagers as the same people with no distinct characteristics. He describes the unplanned scattering of their houses and the palm-leaf thatched huts, marking them with yellow color create the difference between the white man’s power and the Burmese. This also describes poverty and foulness within the neighborhood.
On the other hand, the narrator is afraid of the Burmese and their forces and he describes them as a sea of people. The officer also offers the people presence and much more force than his. He also realises that he is one person among a “sea” of many others.
The colonial officer notices that though he is legally powerful and has a rifle, the events of the day remain dictated by the people behind him who would see him as a fool if he did not shoot the elephant in spite of having the weapon amidst many helpless Burmese. The author also uses words such as magical, conjurer and absurd puppet to show he is against the British colonial powers. The words take the fear of the colonised people that the British people criticise.
Orwell uses un-scientific words when describing the event. The use of diction displays a corrupt British influence to the colonized people and reflects the degradation of the style of the colonising powers. This study therefore shows the moving symbol of the colonial experience.
The view of British imperialism is more reflected where the colonial officer shows that he is against the oppressors and their evil deeds. Though he is a British officer and has much authority among the Burmese people, he has some build up hatred and remorse towards himself and his empire, as well as to the Burma people whom he refers to as evil spirited little beasts.
The essay therefore does not only show the personal experience with the elephant, but also uses metaphors to show the experience with the imperialism and his views towards the colonial rule.
Orwell expresses hostile feelings towards the imperialism, British justification for taking over the powers of the Burma people and the entire British Empire. Orwell has set the mood of the essay by illustrating the climate to be cloudy and stuffy morning at the beginning of the rain. This shows that Orwell has established that his character is weak and discomforting especially by describing how the Burma people laughed and mocked him.
According to Adas & Peter (54-58) imperialism has been a cause for the poor relationship between the Burma people and police officers. The breakdown brings the beliefs of imperialism in practical application. This is shown by how the British came to power and the history of the Burma and how the society had been exploited.
Orwell gives his experience in Burma and the story shows the mood and feeling of a person experiencing British imperial break down. Orwell realised that though he is the authority in the region, the Burmese people had control over his actions. This shows that there was a poor relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. The officer describes his nature of authority as derived from the people as opposed to self-designed force.
He states that he stood with a rifle in his hands and thought of the hollowness and ineffectiveness of the power of the white man in the East. With much power between citizens and political leaders in England over the Burmese people, the people using the authority had also recognised the poor relationship between the colonised and the colonisers.
It is therefore clear that the buildup of the story of finding the elephant serves a metaphoric force to illuminate on the imperialist powers that usurps the rights of the people. The narrator shows that the elephant’s rampaging destroyed homes, food shelves and worse of all, it killed a man described as having an unbearable agony on his face. Upon finding the elephant, the narrator also describes that he knew for sure that he had no right to shoot him.
This shows that as a colonial officer, he ought not to kill his ruling government but support it (Barbara 46). The narrator also says that when he laid his eyes on the huge mass of Burmese behind him, he changed his attitude towards shooting the elephant. He continually says that he did not want to shoot the elephant and this explains that the narrator understands the guilt of shooting an elephant that seemed so peaceful from a distance.
The narrator also gives various reasons why he did not want to shoot the elephant, for example, he states that an elephant was worth more alive than it dead. He also states that he is bad at shooting, and he would not want to miss the target, as he never wanted the crowd to laugh at him and make him seem defeated. This shows that the colonial police officer fell to the expectations of the Burmese. He went against his will and moral belief and decided to shoot (Barbara 46). This describes how the British people would never want to seem less powerful than the natives as the colonisers in the story did. The death of the elephant metaphorically represents the British Imperialism in Burma. This is because before the British expansion came to Burma, it was a free kingdom and the Burmese and the British oppressors fought three wars. Barbara (2006) describes that the first was the Anglo-Burmese War fought in 1824 and the other was in 1852. The third war was in 1855 where the British took over Burma.
Orwell states that he did not hear the bang or kick of the first trigger, and he had to fire again at the same spot between the ears where it was easier to kill the elephant. The third firing illustrates the final shot to the elephant, as it showed the agony that jolted its whole body. The elephant knocked its last strength from his legs.
The three wars therefore represented the three shots. Hobson (2005) puts it that the elephant represented Burma and its unyielding struggle to remain powerful over the colonisers (5-7). This can be compared to how the elephant had tried to remain alive after the third shot.
By staying down after the third shot, the elephant is still alive, just like the Burmese people who were still there, powerless and helpless once the three wars. Orwell (1936) explains that the Burmese are now under the control of the British, and the death of the elephant is a metaphor showing the British rule and how it has declined against Burmese as some went away and others died (67).
Orwell reflects guilt by stating that seeing the elephant lying so powerless on the ground unable to move and yet powerless to die. The narrator shows that he is guilty being a colonial police officer who fought in the war against Burma. Beissinger (294-303) shows that Britons were also doubtful of their right to rule others in their territory.
This mounted much hatred and resentment from the Burmese. By killing the elephant, Orwell justifies himself for having the right to shoot and that it was legal. He justifies this using the fact that a mad elephant deserves being killed just as a mad dog is once the owner does not control it (Beissinger 299). He also admits being glad for the elephant had killed a villager and legally that justifies a legal act. However, Orwell realises the truth to be false in the wake of the efforts to save the elephant.
Shooting an Elephant Symbolism & Metaphors
Orwell uses the metaphors; for example, by comparing himself to a magician and the huge masses of villagers was his audience. He also compares himself to a lead actor and as an absurd puppet. Orwell states that he represents a posing dummy and that he looked like a person wearing a mask. This is because by holding the rifle, the Burma people expected to see the elephant down. John (2008) describes that though he was a white man and more so, in the authority, it was more expected that he had to kill the elephant.
This describes George Orwell’s realisation of the position of the whites in the East and the negative contribution of imperialism. Orwell also realised that once a white man became a tormenter, he destroyed his own freedom. He says that white men should constantly do what the natives expect from them and impress them as they have control over the white man. Orwell completes his role and realises that throughout his rule in Burma, he is the Burmese victim.
Shooting an Elephant Conclusion
Shooting the elephant is a clear depiction of the imperialist powers that wok to the detriment of the subjects. In his metaphoric epresentations, Orwell manages to demonstrate in clear terms the immense negative images portrayed by the inhibiting powers of the colonial masters.
By mentioning himself as an actor in the play, the narrator realised that he had to impress his audience who were people from Burma, and says that by aiming at the elephant’s head, the people behind him felt as if the curtains from the theatre were finally opened for the audience to view the play. These descriptions show his weaker character of submission to the crowd, which defines the order of the day through control of his actions.
However, he had to wear a mask and act like a powerful white man. The examples show the double-edged sword of imperialism and its misrepresentation of the people. The personal experience shows a moral dilemma reflecting the evils influenced by the colonial politics and imperialism.
Orwell represents an anti-imperialist writer that promotes this through the story of shooting the elephant. This is because, in this case, both the colonisers and the colonised are destroyed at the end. He detests the tethering effects of the colonial Britain and the story shows that the conqueror does not control the situation, but the expectations of the people guide him.
Works Cited
Adas, Michael. & Peter, N. Turbulent passage a global history of the Twentieth Century. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 2008. Print.
Barbara, Bush. Imperialism and Post colonialism, History: Concepts, Theories and Practice, Longmans, 2006. Print.
Beissinger, Mark. “Soviet Empire as Family Resemblance,” Slavic Review 65 (2006): 294-303.
Hobson, Atkinson. Imperialism: a study. Cosimo, Inc. New York: 2005. Print.
John, Darwin. After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000. New York: Penguin Books, 2008. Print.
Johnston, Ronald. The Dictionary of Human Geography. eds. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000, Print.
In the essay “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell tries to put across the dilemma of a white man in a position of power in the imperialistic Britain, who does not quite identify with the evils of imperialism.
This often leads him in to uncomfortable situations requiring him to take actions against his will. Although it might seem that this means carrying out British orders even when he does not agree with them, “Shooting an Elephant” shows that it could also mean living up to the expectations placed on a white man by the locals, even though it may be against his conscious.
In the essay, Orwell realizes that he must shoot the elephant because as a representative of the British imperialism in the small town, not doing so would have shown the British Empire to be a foreign oppressor that could not be trusted to protect the locals when needed.
Orwell makes its very clear at the outset that even though he represented the British imperialism, he had already decided that “imperialism was an evil thing” (para 2) and secretly sided with the Burmese in their fight against the British oppression.
So even though the Burmese saw him as an enemy and tried to harm him in inconspicuous ways, Orwell actually empathized with their cause. As such, his duties as police officer often meant that he had to carry out orders that at a personal level he found distasteful. It also meant that the locals, who had no way of knowing how he really felt, judged him based on the actions that he carried out as an instrument of the British rule.
According to Bertonneau, “The “British Empire” is never present in and of itself, because it is an abstraction, a system; it only appears through its agents” (para 3), the agent in this case being Orwell. As a result, Orwell realizes that he must always act in way that is expected of a white man, even though he may not personally agree with those actions.
This need to always behave in a way expected of him is not because of any pressure from the empire or his superiors but because as a representative of the British ruler, he must do everything he can to “impress the ‘natives’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him” (para 7).
Killing the elephant was not only morally wrong since it was a source of income to its owner but even legally it bordered on the gray. Orwell was well aware of this even before he laid his eyes on the elephant. He never really intended to kill the elephant and when he borrowed the elephant rifle, it was more as an act of self defense than with any intention to shoot at the elephant.
Yet, once he had got the gun, the natives expected him to kill the elephant and protect them from the “crazy” animal. As more and more natives gathered, the pressure to do what was expected of him and impress the natives grew, until Orwell was left with no other option but to shoot the elephant, against his better judgment.
Orwell’s actions show that even though as a person he may not want to kill the elephant, as a white man, “he wears a mask” of the colonizer and hence must live up to the expectations placed on a white colonizer, that is, make sure that “his face grows to fit” the said mask. As a white man in the colony, he is by definition supposed to be superior to those he colonizes.
He cannot afford to show any kind of weakness which would in any way compromise his superiority over the colonized. As a result, even though he believes that imperialism is evil, he “ultimately fails to see beyond the ‘yellow faces’ of the Burmans” (Tyner 266).
His “white mask” of the colonizer is juxtaposed against the “yellow mask” of the colonized and the white man must always come across as the superior. If he had not killed the elephant, he would have come across as a weak person and become a laughing stock among the locals.
As Orwell mentions, their “hideous laughter” and “sneering yellow faces” (para 1) were getting on his nerves and he could not allow them to get another opportunity to laugh at him. By killing the elephant, he made sure that the superior white mask of the colonizer that he wore in his interactions with natives remained firmly in place.
Thus, Orwell contends that even though he was supposedly the free white man ruling the native Burmans, in reality he was not really free as he could not do what he really wanted to do but must always to what was expected of him as a representative of the British government.
The British Empire is just an abstract system but it is the actual people, whether the colonized or the colonizer, who must give up their freedom in order to live within this system. In killing the elephant, Orwell stopped being a “person” and become just an agent of the British Empire, thus losing his freedom as an individual.
Works Cited
Bertonneau, Thomas. “An overview of “Shooting an Elephant”.” Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant” 1931. Web.
Tyner, James A. “Landscape and the mask of self in George Orwell’s ‘Shooting an elephant’.” Area 37.3 (2005): 260-267. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web.
The problems of colonialism are generally thought to have not been recognized in earlier times and are thus considered to be only recently discovered. However, there are many texts, both in fiction and non-fiction, that indicate the problems of colonialism were widely recognized and ignored in the face of tremendous profits and the ability to suppress. These texts reveal the inconsistencies of colonialism and its tendency to place the colonized people, regardless of their own values, abilities, and talents, at a somehow sub-human status as if they were naturally intended to serve the desires and greed of the white people who came to rule over them.
Understanding colonialism from the perspective of the ‘dominant’ white man in the colonized country as in Orson Wells’ story “Shooting an Elephant” (1936) reveals how colonialism didn’t necessarily bring about the sense of superiority and greatness expected for the individual white man living in that country.
At the same time, Wells structures this story as a journey story. Journey stories are usually some form of coming-of-age ritual in which the main character learns something significant about himself as a result of some physical journey he’s undertaken. While he doesn’t take any lengthy journeys outside of his familiar region, the narrator of “Shooting an Elephant” relates an incident in which he found himself forced to shoot an elephant by the limitations and expectations of his position as the authoritative white man, learning much about himself in the process.
The story begins with an introduction to the character. It’s told in the first person, so the character speaks directly to the reader as he shares his thoughts about how much he hates his job as an Imperial Policeman. He hates this job because he is obliged to uphold the British persona (that all British are far superior to all India and therefore cannot socialize at any level) even though he doesn’t agree with it and is astonishingly lonely in his present capacity.
While he sympathizes with the situation of the people of India and wants more than anything to be friends with them, the Indian people hate him and constantly bait him by spitting on him, tripping him, and generally finding means of irritating him without actually stepping outside the bounds of their own station in this colonized life. “All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.”
He is frustrated because he doesn’t have anyone to talk to, and he is being blamed for the actions of his government, something he doesn’t have any control over at all.
Then one day, he is called on to come and take care of a problem. An elephant in musth is running loose in the poor section of town, and they need him to stop it. ‘Musth’ is explained to be something like an animal in heat, ready to copulate with his own species and therefore driven mostly out of his mind by the physical urge until either it is satisfied or the period passes.
The narrator is proud because the common people are confidently turning to him to take care of the problem, but despite his exterior appearance, internally, he isn’t sure if there is anything he can do about it. He rides his pony to the area of town where the elephant is reported to be like a knight riding to the rescue of a fair damsel brandishing his rifle, which is not strong enough to kill the elephant, but he hopes he will make enough noise to frighten it away from the populated areas.
He sends for a stronger gun when he discovers that the elephant has killed a man, but when he sees the elephant, he decides that he doesn’t really need to kill it because it is coming out of musth. “I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again and then go home.” The value of a trained elephant was very high when it was alive but very low when dead, and the narrator believes he will be able to point to this fact as a rationale for why the animal wasn’t shot. Although he is sure he is superior in this instant and the one making all the decisions, he is about to learn otherwise.
As he turns to go home, he notices the crowd of excited people who have gathered behind him, waiting either for elephant meat or to see the Englishman get trampled. “Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality, I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.”
Suddenly, he realizes the true nature of imperialism, wherein seeking to dominate another, the dominator actually only enslaves himself. Although he looked like he was in charge on the outside, he really only had two choices – either kill the elephant and maintain the idea that the British were superior and decisive, or leave the now harmless elephant to wander around until the owner came to get him and give the English empire an association with weakness and indecisiveness in the process. Although the elephant was an expensive piece of equipment, the reputation of the British Empire was more important, so the narrator shoots the elephant.
This short and unusual series of events causes the narrator to reassess his position in life and realize that his position of command is, in reality, a position of service and capitulation to someone else’s set of ideas.
The narrator experiences a loss of self in the face of having to live up to an ideal image of the sahib who must take definitive action rather than simply doing the right thing. The way Wells presents the story indicates that the narrator’s need to shoot the elephant sprung from the need not to make the ‘white man,’ as a social concept, appear foolish rather than from the actual pressure of the crowd itself. Throughout the story, there is a schism between outward appearances and inward realities that highlights the level to which colonization worked to destroy from within on numerous and sometimes unexpected levels.
Works Cited
Wells, Orson. “Shooting an Elephant.” The Writer’s Presence: A Pool of Readings. 5th Edition. Donald McQuade & Robert Atwan (Eds.). St. Martin’s Press, 2000.