Shooting An Elephant Essay
Essay on ‘Shooting an Elephant’ by George Orwell
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.“ . This quotation from the short story “Shooting an Elephant” shows the impact of the British Empire on India during the colonial period. The main character, who is a British police officer, serving in Burma shows a big hatred to both sides. We follow him develop into shooting an Elephant.
The protagonist of the story, an Anglo-Indian police officer in Burma, receives a call telling him there is an elephant, in burst, loose running directly through a village. When arriving to the scene, a man has been trampled to death by the Elephant - this results in the protagonist sending an orderly to go and get a riffle. At this very moment we know there is no turning back, we have reached point of no return.
When actually finding the elephant it is peacefully …show more content…
grazing outside the village, but the town has heard the amazing news of an elephant having to be shoot and therefore, according to the main character, there are thousands of people looking at him - making the pressure of actually having to shoot the elephant evident.
The setting of the story functions in different ways.
Firstly as a way of predicting later events outcome; just before leaving to find the elephant, the main character comments on the weather: “I remember it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” (own marking, p. 112 ll. 14-15) the words marked with black are very negatively loaded, and leaves us with the feeling of something bad going to happen - also the sentence is written in dative which makes the prediction stand clearer. The setting also functions as a way of showing emotions. When the main character tells us about the field the elephant had chosen to graze on, he tells about the thousands of yards of rice fields:” [...] a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass.” (p. 113 ll. 33-35). He walks on a swampy field, probably making him even more annoyed about the situation and this is expressed - again - with negatively loaded
words.
George Orwell uses an omniscient first person narrator and this gives us a very subjective point of view. Also when reading ‘Shooting an Elephant’ and knowing somewhat about the author, you can see the huge similarities between George Orwell’s live and the protagonist in the story. Orwell was stationed in India as a very unhappy police officer having to obey rules he did not support - and so we can also say for the main character in the text. Also the story being written with a first person narrator underlines the possibility of Orwell actually being the leading role.
There is no exact time or year on the story, but if you interpret the story as being an essay of Orwell’s own experiences in India, it would have to take place around 1922-1927, because these where the years Orwell served as a police officer in India. Also we are not told the name of the antagonist, which could indicate the text being autobiographical writing.
The elephant is an obvious element to give symbolic meaning, being in the main title. The elephant can be interpreted in two ways; the first being the elephant as a symbol of the British Empire. You can interpret this because of the elephant being a mighty animal, which is both massive and powerful - which fits perfectly on the British Empire. Also the natives, the Burmese people, want the Elephant to be killed, like in reality; they did not want the British Empire controlling them. If you give the elephant this symbolic meaning, the elephant functions as the antagonist of the story.
The second way you can interpret the elephant is as a symbol of India. When doing this the protagonist becomes a symbol of the British Empire. This is shown at the scene where the main character shoots the Elephant several times: “[...][I] poured shot after shoot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. [...] In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him a half an hour to die.” (p. 118 ll. 2-7). The British Empire kept fighting and fighting with the Indian people, ‘pouring shoot after shoot into their heart’, in the end finally giving the country up, leaving them helplessly behind ‘to die’. Also you can see the animal, as a symbol of India, because India is known for using Elephants as ‘machines’ to work with.
Both ways of interpreting the symbolic meaning of the Elephant has good arguments for being right and therefore it can also be interpreted in different ways, depending on how you look at the context and perspective.
Throughout the text, we are told numerous times by the protagonist himself that he is not going to kill the elephant. During the time from hearing about the elephant to actually killing it, we are told approximately ten times that the central character does not want to kill the elephant and that he is not going to shoot it. This almost becomes a way of denying it ever happening. Also the way of mentioning the sentence “i did not want to kill it” time after time, with smaller and smaller distance between builds up the tension. He, of course, ends up shooting the elephant, basing it on the pressure from the Burmese population.
In the very last sentences the protagonist, after having put dozens of bullets into the elephants heart, leaving the animal by, later on hears about its troubled death, almost shaking his head and trying to get the world to understand “[...] I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”. Here the protagonist, possibly Orwell’s, opinion is expressed. He felt like he had to do something for India - without wanting to.
“And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.“ . This quotation from the short story “Shooting an Elephant” shows the impact of the British Empire on India during the colonial period. The main character, who is a British police officer, serving in Burma shows a big hatred to both sides. We follow him develop into shooting an Elephant.
The protagonist of the story, an Anglo-Indian police officer in Burma, receives a call telling him there is an elephant, in burst, loose running directly through a village. When arriving to the scene, a man has been trampled to death by the Elephant - this results in the protagonist sending an orderly to go and get a riffle. At this very moment we know there is no turning back, we have reached point of no return.
When actually finding the elephant it is peacefully …show more content…
grazing outside the village, but the town has heard the amazing news of an elephant having to be shoot and therefore, according to the main character, there are thousands of people looking at him - making the pressure of actually having to shoot the elephant evident.
The setting of the story functions in different ways.
Firstly as a way of predicting later events outcome; just before leaving to find the elephant, the main character comments on the weather: “I remember it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains.” (own marking, p. 112 ll. 14-15) the words marked with black are very negatively loaded, and leaves us with the feeling of something bad going to happen - also the sentence is written in dative which makes the prediction stand clearer. The setting also functions as a way of showing emotions. When the main character tells us about the field the elephant had chosen to graze on, he tells about the thousands of yards of rice fields:” [...] a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass.” (p. 113 ll. 33-35). He walks on a swampy field, probably making him even more annoyed about the situation and this is expressed - again - with negatively loaded
words.
George Orwell uses an omniscient first person narrator and this gives us a very subjective point of view. Also when reading ‘Shooting an Elephant’ and knowing somewhat about the author, you can see the huge similarities between George Orwell’s live and the protagonist in the story. Orwell was stationed in India as a very unhappy police officer having to obey rules he did not support - and so we can also say for the main character in the text. Also the story being written with a first person narrator underlines the possibility of Orwell actually being the leading role.
There is no exact time or year on the story, but if you interpret the story as being an essay of Orwell’s own experiences in India, it would have to take place around 1922-1927, because these where the years Orwell served as a police officer in India. Also we are not told the name of the antagonist, which could indicate the text being autobiographical writing.
The elephant is an obvious element to give symbolic meaning, being in the main title. The elephant can be interpreted in two ways; the first being the elephant as a symbol of the British Empire. You can interpret this because of the elephant being a mighty animal, which is both massive and powerful - which fits perfectly on the British Empire. Also the natives, the Burmese people, want the Elephant to be killed, like in reality; they did not want the British Empire controlling them. If you give the elephant this symbolic meaning, the elephant functions as the antagonist of the story.
The second way you can interpret the elephant is as a symbol of India. When doing this the protagonist becomes a symbol of the British Empire. This is shown at the scene where the main character shoots the Elephant several times: “[...][I] poured shot after shoot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. [...] In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him a half an hour to die.” (p. 118 ll. 2-7). The British Empire kept fighting and fighting with the Indian people, ‘pouring shoot after shoot into their heart’, in the end finally giving the country up, leaving them helplessly behind ‘to die’. Also you can see the animal, as a symbol of India, because India is known for using Elephants as ‘machines’ to work with.
Both ways of interpreting the symbolic meaning of the Elephant has good arguments for being right and therefore it can also be interpreted in different ways, depending on how you look at the context and perspective.
Throughout the text, we are told numerous times by the protagonist himself that he is not going to kill the elephant. During the time from hearing about the elephant to actually killing it, we are told approximately ten times that the central character does not want to kill the elephant and that he is not going to shoot it. This almost becomes a way of denying it ever happening. Also the way of mentioning the sentence “i did not want to kill it” time after time, with smaller and smaller distance between builds up the tension. He, of course, ends up shooting the elephant, basing it on the pressure from the Burmese population.
In the very last sentences the protagonist, after having put dozens of bullets into the elephants heart, leaving the animal by, later on hears about its troubled death, almost shaking his head and trying to get the world to understand “[...] I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”. Here the protagonist, possibly Orwell’s, opinion is expressed. He felt like he had to do something for India - without wanting to.