Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell Essay

Throughout Orwell's literary career, he avidly stood against totalitarian and imperialistic forms of government. His two most famous works (1984 and Animal Farm) both exemplify this point, but at the same time weaken it. These two works were written in protest of those governments, but in a fictional back ground. In Orwell's essay Shooting an Elephant, he uses a personal experience to more clearly emphasize the impact of imperialism at the sociological and psychological level, in conjunction with other literary elements. This symposium of devices help drive the purpose of his paper and ultimately creates a more substantial impact on any reader. The most obvious is his choice to illustrate his point through a very real and personal experience
Throughout much of the latter half of the text, Orwell stated his unwillingness to shoot the beast. The reassertion of this fact only added to the pressure of committing the act. The fact that the thought of killing the elephant bothered him so, made the end more powerful. It not only emphasized his view, but also the sheer amount of pressure that this powerless crowd had on a superior authority. The pressure created by this imperialistic idea. In the end, we see the result of carefully planned use of literary devices. Orwell knew what it was he needed to use in order to further his point, and utilized them well. Though this has been criticized in the past because there is no proof of this event, I feel the passion and realism portrayed by Orwell negates any such argument against the validity and impact of this work. In my personal life, I am yet to commit such a large scale and public act such as the one told in this essay, but I feel every person has yielded their beliefs to a lesser body of people due to the pressures that existed. This is especially true in the modern day for people my age. A day and age where peer pressure is the cause of many to go into such behaviors as drinking, smoking, and illicit