That night, I once again woke up from my fitful sleep and decided to walk it off, but when I came downstairs, feeling the touch of the wooden handrail, and the pair of survivors on watch didn't wave back to me, or even blink. I exited the house, and the wind whistled as the world froze, and — suddenly there was a glimpse of someone darting through the streets. They were a cat - they moved lithely and disappeared from sight for a few seconds, then reappeared…
In the short story by George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant" the author unveiled to his audience the bureaucracy and his struggled with himself. As in so many other countries, bureaucracy and prejudice maybe found. However, in East Burma those days it was regiment. it appeared to be do as one says or pay the consequences of not doing the preferred choice.…
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.…
Tony Earley states “a good story is about the thing, and the other thing. The second thing looks like the first thing, but it’s something else”. Earley’s idea can apply to Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant”. In this scenario, the two “things” are imperialism and the elephant. Orwell clearly and precisely proves Earley’s theory (per say) in his essay.…
This excerpt, The Night Faces Up story, as well as the Star Trek episode I watched for this class all have me very intrigued by the kind of stories they are. I never really gave any thought into alternate realities or vivid dreams but these pieces that we have read for this class have brought forth a new perspective for me. The writers portray a very different world then reality an alternate to what the subject actually lives. In this excerpt she passes out for just a few seconds but in somehow some way she comes back in 15second across the room muddy and wet. Her husband was sitting right there next to her and she disappeared.…
Prime reality is the idea that it is real for you. Every person’s reality is different for each individual as each person has their own set of beliefs and ideas. It is an interesting concept to wrap my mind around as I am still trying to capture all the lessons I have learned in this class and also all the information I have learned from the book to be able to appropriately answer this question. With the current information I have I would have to say prime reality for me is one in which I can utilize the information in. For me to be able to focus in this life I must view prime reality as the one in which I am accomplishing things. If I am not viewing this as the really real then I am constantly questioning my actions and challenging what I am doing with this question always at the forefront, “Is my awake state truly a dream state and when I sleep is that real? If this were the case my productivity would be low and my actions on a daily basis would become a constant battle. For now, especially in order to finish my studies I view my awake state the one in which I am accomplishing things based on what society says are accomplishments is what I view to be the really real, of course for now.…
People all over the world have to make choices that can, and will, change certain areas of their lives. Some will be more important than others. They can be defining moments in many's lives, as it was for the narrator of "Shooting an Elephant." He made a decision in the moment, one that can be difficult to analyze. One must take the ethics of the action into consideration, as well as his motivation and how the action affected him after. Just figuring out the details of his decision can show what kind of person he was; whether or not he was doing it out of cruelty, looking out for others, or for himself. The choice changed his life greatly from before and after, not only in terms of himself, but also those around him.…
In life, everyone has their own choices to make. Most of the time, the side that one has to choose is not what they want but what they need. Just one wrong decision can even cost a life. Hence many choices are immensely difficult. A significant one could be choosing to follow one own heart or to surrender under the pressure of the society they live in. This is the one that occur in Orwell situation. In his essay, Orwell writes about the one who has the responsibility of managing, regarding their morals and self-worth, are higher than those are being oppressed, and he reveals these costs by examining the outer forces that shape his behavior, the inner forces that lead him to shoot the elephant, and what he and England end up losing when they do not live up to their own principles.…
take place in imaginary worlds where magic and magical creatures are common. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three, all of which are genres of speculative fiction.…
George Orwell 's three major books of travel writing--Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), and Homage to Catalonia (1938)--revived the tradition of excursionary literature as social and political analysis. "Into Unknown England" books were initiated by reform-minded Victorian and Edwardian authors. In his three travel books Orwell, who casts himself as a representative of English "lower-upper-middle-class" and as an imaginary social conscience, ventured into the slums of Paris and London, the mining towns of northern England, and the battlefront of the Spanish Civil War, addressing what he saw as a largely conservative and apathetic English readership. Orwell sought to prove that class inequality and the corruption of progressive political ideals were, in his evolving socialist estimation, damning England and the Western world to social division, provincial bigotry, and eventually world war. Yet Orwell 's deep acculturation in traditional middle-class British mores and patriotic sentiments clashed with his sensitivity to class and racial bias. In particular Orwell 's travel essays on Marrakech and Burma (now Myanmar) are ambiguous but important examples of how literature that seeks sympathy with or advocacy for other cultures and groups also demonstrates how the identities of writers, their subjects, and those who read their work are constructed by intercultural exchange. These complications, coupled with the political inconsistencies within Orwell 's worldview over the course of his lifetime, have led to warring interpretations of his legacy. Recent critical debate has focused on Orwell 's reliability as an observer, his idiosyncratic views on socialism, and the degree to which his reputation for fairness, decency, and common sense are attributable to his insistence on empirically verifiable political and moral "truths."…
In “Shooting an Elephant” George Orwell is not liked by the Burmese people because he is the representation of their oppressors, the British. He gets his chance to be the hero when an elephant gets loose and causes destruction and the people need him to kill the beast. What would have happened if he didn’t shoot the elephant? Why Orwell feel so awful about killing the elephant? Orwell decides to kill the elephant, but does he do it for the right reason?…
The day had come when little Timmy would finally get to go to the circus. He was so eager that he was the first one out of bed that morning. Too excited to even function, Timmy ran to his parents’ room and jumped on this parents shouting for them to get up. His parents moved sluggishly to the bathroom and got ready to go to the circus as Timmy chattered on about what animals they were going to see that day. Timmy was mostly excited to see his favorite animal, the Elephant. During the car ride to the circus, Timmy went on and on about how vast Elephants are, and how they never forgot anything. When they finally arrived, Timmy was amazed at the glitz and glamour of the circus tent. Timmy enjoyed the…
The story that my evaluation will be based on is Shooting an Elephant written in 1936. The author George Orwell was born in 1903 in India to a British officer raised in England. He attended Eton College, which introduced him to England's middle and upper classes. He was denied a scholarship, which led him to become a police officer for the Indian Imperial in 1922. He served in Burma until resigning in 1927 due to the lack of respect for the justice of British Imperialism in Burma and India. He was now determined to become a writer, so at the brink of poverty he began to pay close attention to social outcasts and laborers. This led him to write Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) during the Spanish Civil War. He embodied his hate for totalitarian system in his book Animal Farm (1945). George Orwell fell to the disease of tuberculosis at forty-seven, but not before he released many works. He wrote six novels, three documentary works, over seven hundred reviews and newspaper articles, and a volume of essays (1149). This particular story was very interesting and found it to hold a lot of truth. Shooting an Elephant is about an English man that was a police officer in Burman, who was hated for his race and felt it almost impossible to do his job. He had to deal with a lot of hatred and disrespect, but yet he was expected to do what the town's people asked of him when they asked. When the elephant got loose the first person the sub-inspector at the opposite end of the town called was the main character, who was to be nameless throughout the entire story. He wanted him to go do something about the loose elephant because the mahout (the keeper and driver of an elephant) was away and no one else could handle a situation such as this. The main character grabbed his 44 rifle and set out to find the elephant. The purpose of the gun was not to kill the elephant but to just scare it with the noise. Little did the officer know the act of grabbing the gun to just scare the…
All the theories that these scientist have are very reasonable explanations to how the species of elephant died to if it was killed by humans. The one thing about the article that catches my attention is that they can’t seem to find what caused the elephant’s bones to be crushed or signs of activity of harm? Was it caused by humans, or was it caused by something else? Considering the time frame, it could easily be caused by human activity. What contradicts this theory it that there was no sign of them needing a food source, but humans being the only species other than it’s own can cause harm to the elephant. This is important because scientist need to know how people lived back then, and what they did to shape today’s world.…
The character that I identify with the most is Orwell in “Shooting an Elephant” because of his struggle to do what is morally right when society wants him to be or do something different. I think I sometimes struggle to do what is morally right when an entire world pushes me to conform. For example, what if I know a friend has cheated on a test but I cannot say anything to the teacher because after all he or she is my friend. Or, when a coworker gets reprimanded by our boss for something I did and I do not speak up because I do not want to be the one to get in trouble at work. I also know that lying is wrong and I have been taught to always tell the truth. However, in our society, many people think telling a little white lie does not matter…