Colonialism: ”Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

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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. 5^th Edition. Donald McQuade & Robert Atwan (Eds.). St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

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Colonialism: ”Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

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