Analysis Of Peter Singer's Essay 'Shooting An Elephant'

In his essay, Peter Singer defines a term, speciesism, which means the “attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”(204). Singer compares the speciesists with racists in order to emphasize that like racists who “give greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race”(206), the speciesists “give greater weight to the interests of members of their species”(206). Then Singer resonates with Bentham’s statement on the capacity for suffering and enjoyment. He believes that in order to be entitled to an equal consideration, a being should be capable of suffering from the pain
Orwell recalls his memory of being “forced” to kill an elephant when he worked as a European police officer in Moulmein. The local people always expressed strong anti-European feeling to Orwell so he was upset and frustrated. One day there was an elephant escaping from the chain. It made a mess and even killed one person. When Orwell found the elephant, it was eating in the paddy fields, no longer being harmful to human. However, since more than two thousand of people were watching Orwell, he decided to kill the elephant. Orwell said that although “an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie”(115), the killed coolie still “put him legally in the right and gave him a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.” (115) In fact, the elephant in the essay is not guilty enough to be killed. It even played an important role of the labor force at that time. Under such circumstance, Orwell killed the elephant for only himself. Having been enduring the local anti-European behaviors for a long time, Orwell would like to utilize this opportunity to keep his reputation and power as a policeman. He wanted to “avoid looking a fool.”(115) and even win so-called respect from local people by doing so. Actually, the elephant sacrifices to Orwell’s pride. The choice Orwell has made clearly shows how blind and selfish Orwell was at that
In his essay, Marvizon points out a clear statement, “Speciesism is unavoidable”. He conveys that treating different species of animals differently is also unavoidable. The ironic equation he provides, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” reminds me of Singer’s disagreement on “We object to cruelty to dogs while consuming the produce of cruelty to pigs”. Even though we all know that we should never say a dog is superior to a pig, we cannot stop naturally thinking and behaving in this way. If we want to give all kinds of animals and human the same rights, can we really treat a person, a dog and a rat equally? Moreover, Marvizon quotes an interesting question to prove his opinion asked by philosopher Gary Francione “My dog has ticks, what do I do?” According to moral obligation, killing ticks is wrong. However, if we choose not to kill the ticks, then it would be harmful to the dog. In some way, curing dogs turns into the assumption that the dog is superior to ticks, which is exactly the practice of speciesism. Therefore, there is not a perfect to balance the equal right between different animals since they are “different”. They are playing different roles in our society that cannot be easily taken places. For example, most of people require eating meats to gain protein and energy. Contradictorily, It seems that the best way to totally