What Is The Difference Between Shooting An Elephant And Dead Men's Path

As humans, we tend to sympathize with oppressed, disregarding how the oppressor is affected as well. This unspoken bias masks our minds, causing us to only realize how harm is being done to one party rather than the other one as well. This moral struggle is depicted in the short stories Dead Men’s Path and Shooting an Elephant. In Dead Man’s Path, Chinua Achebe highlights the dangers in our own actions through the character Michael Obi. Obi is recently appointed headmaster of a school but his fatal decision to interfere with the village, strips his title away. Comparably, In Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell portrays the protagonist, the British officer, as being mentally weak. The character’s devastating action of killing the Elephant is fueled by his fear of appearing like a fool among the natives. Both short stories show how the destructive nature of colonial society, adversely influences all the character. In the short stories, both
In this story, we see how Obi, the headmaster hold more social power as compared to the neighboring village. However, in the end, Obi saw“the ruins of his work. The beautiful hedges were torn up not just near the path but right around the school, the flowers trampled to death and one of the school buildings pulled down.” This shows how even though Obi, is socially higher, his demands are ignored by the villagers. His social standing is the reason why at first he can be referred to as a “colonizer.” but the villager’s neglectance to his concerns shows how he actually plays the role of the “colonized.” The oppression of the villagers symbolically represents the life of the “colonized” whereas Obi’s social status causes him to mirror the role of the “colonizer.” This shift of power conveys how dangerous this type of environment is for