Shooting An Elephant Greed

Imagine that you have everything that you could ever desire. An expensive house, a loving family, influential friends, and anything you could want in the world. Then one day you see something that catches your eye. Suddenly all of your waking thoughts are consumed by that item. You are always searching for it, wishing for it. It gets to the point where all you do is obsess and lust after the object. Finally, you obtain it, but as you look around, you’ve lost everything from your previously perfect life. It seems as if in a blink of an eye that perfect life has unraveled around you. In your blind grasping for the thing you thought you desired most, you lost everything you already had. Although at first desire appears to grant all of one’s wishes,
in reality desire for money, power, and freedom can only lead to death and destruction.
In literature, desire for money often leads to one’s downfall which suggests that in real life desire for money leads to extreme consequences. In “The Pardoner’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, all three of the men betray each other and, in the end, all die because of their overwhelming greed. After the three men discover “a pile of golden florins on the ground, New-coined… beautiful and bright” (Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale 253) they immediately begin to plot against each other. Chaucer emphasizes the alluring beauty of the florins to show how desire may appear beautiful, but its consequences are not. In the face of the overwhelming treasure all three men immediately forget their friendship with each other and start plotting for a larger share of the gold, first with the two men planning to murder the third man by “put[ting] [a] dagger through his back” when he comes back from the town and next with the youngest plotting to poison his friends in order to get all of the “bright New florins” all for himself(Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale 254). By using only, the words ‘bright’ and ‘beautiful’ to describe the florins Chaucer surrounds a negative concept such as greed with words that have a positive connotation, masking the evilness and ugliness. By presenting greed as beautiful and wonderful, Chaucer shows the two-faced nature of greed. Desire for money causing one’s downfall is further illustrated by the character of Mr. Elton in Emma. Mr. Elton tries to marry Emma for her money and influence, however his plan backfires as Emma is “insulted by his hopes” and sees that all “he wanted [was] to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love” (Austen 108). Before, Emma regarded Mr. Elton as a perfect gentleman that would be a wonderful match for her friend. However, her opinion of Mr. Elton has changed as exhibited by verbs such as insulted and pretended as well as words such as arrogance. Insulted and arrogance both carry a negative connotation while the act of pretending implies back-handed deals and masks that hide one’s true personality. By using all of these negatively charged words, Austen implies that Emma now thinks lesser of Mr. Elton. Because of Emma’s high standing in the upper society, her hatred for Mr. Elton spreads quickly among the upper echelons thus ruining Mr. Elton’s social standing.
Besides desire for money, desire for power can also lead to the downfall of those who are lusting for the power.
The desire for power can lead to the person’s physical death, as shown in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and it can also lead to the death of metaphorical aspects of the person, such as their humanity which is revealed in “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell. In “Shooting an Elephant” the greed of the empire leads to its own downfall as well as to the loss of its humanity. The loss of the British Empire’s humanity is shown in the use of words that have animal imagery or connotations in connection to the Burmese, words such as cowed, cages, and beasts. These descriptions degrade the Burmese, stripping of them of their humanity and lowering them to the status of mere animals. The degrading of the Burmese shows the lack of humanity of the British Empire, no human would ever degrade another human in such a manner. In losing their humanity, the British become mere “absurd puppet[s] pushed to and fro by the will of [others]”; they only have the shape of a human, but they do not have anything inside of them, a heart, morals or otherwise. The downfall of the Empire is expressed in the death of the elephant. The elephant is a metaphor for the empire, as shown by how “the Burmese were quite helpless against it” and by the destruction the elephant causes in the village which is a parallel to the destruction that the empire as a whole wrecked on the country of Burma. By shooting
the elephant, the narrator kills the elephant and by proxy the British empire bringing about its downfall as subjugated peoples swarmed in like vultures to pick apart the once mighty empire. In Macbeth, the title character’s “vaulting ambition” leads to his murder of King Duncan, Banquo, and eventually his own death. Previously, Macbeth was content to live as Thane of Cawdor, with no ambitions of reaching a higher rank. He had no reason to wish for more, he had prestige, wealth, and a loving wife. However, once the three witches declare that Macbeth will become “Thane of Glamis…Thane of Cawdor…[and] king hereafter!” (Shakespeare 1.3.51-53) Macbeth’s slumbering ambition is awakened and urges him to commit crimes that he previously wouldn’t even have dreamed of doing. His ambition blinds him to his soul becoming more and more tainted with each and every person that dies at his hands. It is only until Lady Macbeth dies that Macbeth realizes the consequences of his actions. Remarking: “all of our yesterdays have lighted fools / the way to dusty death” (Shakespeare 5.5. 25-26). Macbeth laments that all of his past decisions to murder and raze in an attempt to gain the throne have led to this “dusty death” Shakespeare uses the phrase “dusty death” as a reference to the bible, specifically Genesis 3.19. By referencing the bible, Shakespeare brings an element of holiness which is in sharp contrast to the life of sin that Macbeth now lives.
In addition to desire for power, desire for freedom can also lead to the death and destruction of the people who want the freedom.
While freedom may have a positive connotation and is generally considered to be positive, it is chasing blindly after the freedom that is dangerous. In “the wife of bath’s tale” the wife of bath is perceived as someone who is lesser because of her desire to be free from the constraints placed by society onto women. In “Annie John” the greed of Annie John to be free of Antigua and her mother’s domineering presence leads to the death of her old self. The wife of bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales wishes to be free from the constraints placed on women in her society. However, her wish to establish herself not as someone’s wife but as someone leads to the destruction of her social standing. The other pilgrims’ attitude towards the wife of bath show how while the wife of bath may have gained the freedom she desired she lost her social standing and the respect of her society in the process. The wife of bath protests against her being regarded badly because of her many marriages by stating: “wise King Solomon of long ago: / we hear he had a thousand wives or so” (Chaucer, Wife of Bath’s prologue 259). In referencing King Solomon, the Wife of Bath both demonstrates that she is well versed in the bible and reveals the hypocrisy of her society. In the time period The Canterbury tales was written, being well versed in the bible was a sign of
good social standing and education. In referencing the bible, the wife of bath shows off her knowledge to the congregated men in an effort to prove to them that she is worthy of a good standing in society. The Wife of Bath also exposes the hypocrisy in her society by showing that it is ok for a man to have multiple brides, but it is not acceptable for a woman to have multiple husbands. Likewise, Annie John desires freedom, not from social norms but rather from her past. In Annie John greed leads to a metaphorical death rather than a physical death. Annie John wishes to metaphorically kill her childhood after the abrupt change in her mother’s attitude towards her. Similar to the wife of bath, Annie John wants freedom from her past ties to Antigua and from her now oppressive mother. She slowly kills her past self by doing “exactly the opposite of whatever [Annie’s mother] desired of [her]”, she plays marbles, she meets with the Red Girl, and she behaves unladylike (Kinkaid 61). This slow death finally culminates with her leaving Antigua for England. As she heads to the ship that will take her to the next part of her life, Annie remembers all of her bittersweet memories as a little girl in Antigua. The death in Annie John is finally complete when she steps onto the boat and finally departs for England. In Annie John’s eagerness to get away from a life that she had grown tired of she failed to see how much she loved about her home until it was too late. She only saw what she had when it was gone.