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Summary Of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell

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Summary Of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell
In the essay “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell uses the elephant as an extended metaphor for Orwell’s morality and the outside forces challenging it. In the second paragraph, Orwell makes it clear that he “was stuck between [George Orwell’s] hatred of the empire [he] served and [his] rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make [his] job impossible.” Deep down, Orwell despised imperialism and sympathized with the oppressed Burmese people as a whole. His morality is clouded, however, by the rage felt towards the natives who humiliate him on a daily basis, giving him an impulse to “drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts.” This conflict is echoed by his encounter with the rampaging elephant. Orwell knows for a fact
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