Summary Of July Shooting An Elephant

In stories, "Fourth of July" and "Shooting an Elephant", the main characters' experience a conflict within themselves. Without these conflicts, it would be hard for the authors' to support their narrative point. In "Fourth of July", it seemed as if the main character was never truly informed of the racism in the world, almost as if her parents were trying to hide it from her. "I wanted to eat in the dining car because I had read all about them, but my mother reminded me for the umpteenth time that dining car food always cost too much money and besides, you never could tell whose hands had been playing all over that food, nor where those hands had been just before. My mother never mentioned that black people were not allowed into railroad dining cars headed south in 1947," (Lorde, para5). In this paragraph, Lorde's mother is trying to put a curtain over her eyes, to make it seem as if they cannot go into dining cars because the food is not sanitary, vice the fact they were not allowed. In "Shooting and Elephant", the beginning he starts off by saying, "I took my rifle, and old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise
might be useful in torrorem (as a warning)," (Orwell, para3). But by the end, he is trying to make reason with himself for why it is all right to kill the elephant. This represents the conflict he is having within himself. In "Fourth of July", the main character's conflict seems to be with her parents throughout the whole story.
As was stated in the first paragraph, it seemed as if her parents tried to cover up the fact that racism, "Was a new and crushing reality…"(Lorde, para7). Another instance where her parents tried to cover up racism was when her sisters' senior trip was to Washington, and her teachers returned her deposit to her saying that the hotel they would stay at would not make her happy. Later to find out that Negroes were not allowed in the hotel they were staying in. And then when they went to the ice cream parlor, and were told they could not stay to eat. Her whole family just tried to shrug it off as if nothing wrong had happened. These were the conflicts that Lorde had to face and overcome
herself. In "Shooting an Elephant", the main character gives off the impression that he is pushing himself to shoot the elephant, then pulling himself back. He said, "I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garnish clothes- faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjuror about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands, I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all," (Orwell, para7). This would lead the reader to believe the elephant was going to be shot. Then he comes back saying, "But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him," (Orwell, para8). And this represents his inner conflict. Both stories had a conflict occurring within the main character that they had to overcome. Each character expressed their conflict in different ways, but in the end, both overcome their conflicts.