Shooting An Elephant Imperialism

Shooting an Elephant Sarig T. Cohen
George Orwell is the author of “Shooting an Elephant”, a short story that uses the small incident of the murder of an elephant to portray the horrors of British Imperialism. Due to the fact that George Orwell writes a short story in the form of an essay, it contains a thesis, which is the argument about the nature of imperialism. The great thing about George Orwell’s essay is that the theme is represented throughout the plot and can be analyzed from any part of the story. This essay will discuss this thesis and how it is represented in Orwell’s short story by analyzing the literary devices used. The most influential literary devices used by George Orwell are metaphors, repetition and alliteration; others include
The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it.” The elephant is seen as a huge animal with a lot of power and being dominant over the Burmese people. Orwell states that they do not have the weapons and capability to control the elephant, similar to the rule of the British. The British Empire was one of the most advanced and brutal empires. She had the largest navy and would force labour throughout her colonies. So her enemies were most often less advanced than she was. George Orwell uses a type of repetition, anaphora, to emphasize the role of the Burmese people. “Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant.” Here the word “some” is repeated to stress the notion that Burmese people cannot be trusted. This is evidence for the racist tone and the condescending tone George Orwell has to the people of Burma. Throughout the essay Orwell plants certain phrases about the Burmese people and Indians which compare to the actions of the British Empire. This is quite ironic since the thesis of the essay is Orwell’s hatred