Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell

In George Orwell's essay, Shooting an Elephant, he is an outsider in his country. As a European in a mainly Burman consumed country he was thought of an outcast or treated as a fool for just being from a different origin than the others. Throughout his days he is continuously taunted and bullied by his own community members, yet ironically they are the ones that he is supposed to be protecting. One day he is presented a problem that he had two potential ways to solve, the non-lethal choice that wouldn’t gain him any brownie points with the townsfolk or a slightly more lethal choice that would gain him a multitude. Orwell choses the later and ends up realizing that he had made huge mistake. He feels extremely guilty, because progressively
Closer to the climax of the story you can tell that he is very melancholy and regretful. Lines like “In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away.” you can see that he can not take the sight of the blood covered elephant. A person who didn’t feel guilt would just walk away without a second look back, accept the people's gratitude, and let themselves be showered with compliments. Orwell instead turns away from the elephant, and the people, not allowing himself to feel proud of what he had done. Shooting an innocent elephant is a big deal, not to mention doing it because of the outrageous amount of pressure of the two thousand people standing by at close watch. He feels very guilty and by the end you can see by the line “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” that he is much more casual about the entire situation. Writing the essay did lessen the guilt that he was feeling, because he was able to explain himself and admit to his wrong doings. Once a few years ago I was riding my bike while my parents were out getting my mom's new car. A few hours after they got home I rolled up with my bike and ended up putting a huge scratch on the side of the car. I considered not telling anyone and let them find out on their own, but in the end I ended up coming clean. It took a huge load off my chest, and even though I knew I was going to be in trouble I still told because it was a way for the guilt not to build up. Even though he still was guilty of actually pulling the trigger the amount of guilt that he ended up feeling was less than what it would have been if would have never said anything about what he