In “Shooting an Elephant‚” George Orwell presents a story in which he reluctantly kills an elephant. Orwell is a British police officer who is always teased by the Burmese‚ who see him as a representative of the British Empire but fail to realize that Orwell also opposes English occupation of Burma. One day‚ Orwell is called to investigate an accident in the marketplace involving a rampant elephant. Orwell borrows a rifle‚ which could bring down the elephant‚ from his friend. He hopes
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Inevitable Morals George Orwell’s 1930 short story “Shooting an Elephant‚” demonstrates the total dangers of the unlimited authority a state has and the astounding presentment of “future dystopia”. In the story‚ Orwell finds himself to be in an intricate situation that involves an elephant. Not only does the fate of the elephant’s life lie in Orwell’s hands‚ he has an audience of people behind him cheering him on‚ making his decision much more difficult to make. Due to the vast crowd surrounding
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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
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An Analysis of Orwell’s "Shooting an Elephant" Erika Moreno-Dalton In "Shooting an Elephant‚" George Orwell finds himself in a difficult situation involving an elephant. The fate of the elephant lies in his hands. Only he can make the final decision. In the end‚ due to Orwell’s decision‚ the elephant lay dying in a pool of blood. Orwell wins the sympathy of readers by expressing the pressure he feels as an Anglo-Indian in Burma‚ struggling with his morals‚ and showing a sense of compassion
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is the greatest accomplishment.” In the essays “Salvation” and “Shooting an Elephant” authors Langston Hughes and George Orwell convey the similar message that anything of importance‚ can’t be forced on anyone‚ they rather have to find it for themselves. Orwell was about twenty years old when he went to the village of Burma to work as an officer for the British. The story focuses on a moment in his life involving shooting an elephant. Hughes on the other hand‚ was a young boy who was brought to a
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1 “The Allegory of the Cave” and “Shooting an Elephant” seems like two completely different stories. Both of them have their own ways of showing enlightenment and ways of perceiving realities. After reading both of these tales multiple times‚ I’ve drawn some conclusions on the different ways of enlightenment that are described throughout each story. In “Shooting an Elephant‚” Policeman Eric Blair is asked to kill the elephant that was ravaging the village. Many times he would describe how he
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An Elephant-Sized Dilemma Everyone‚ of all ages and time periods‚ faces a moral dilemma. This may be about a smaller problem or matters of life and death that have a far more wide-ranging impact‚ such as imperialism. In George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant‚” an unnamed narrator‚ despite his initial reluctance‚ succumbs to collective pressures to shoot a marauding elephant in Lower Burma. Orwell comments on the dangers of collective pressure and the horrors of imperialism in order to explore the
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Name Instructor English 15 October 2010 "Death of an Elephant": Symbolism in Orwell As a former business major‚ whenever I read‚ whether fiction or non-fiction‚ I tend to focus too much on the surface meaning—the facts—and I often miss the subtle symbolism and deeper meaning of a piece of literature. As an English major‚ I am attempting to change‚ but I am often skeptical of symbolism‚ fearing that we may be reading too much into an author’s words. For
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Readers Response to George Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant The first time I found myself reading the short story “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell was during my senior year of high school. As an animal lover‚ the title was as intriguing as it was unappealing. Why would you want to shoot an elephant? That question is one that the character‚ the author himself‚ asks throughout the story as it’s told. It starts by introducing himself as a white sub-divisional police officer serving in Moulmein
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paper‚ the transitivity system is employed to analyze George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” in attempt to uncover the underlining imperialistic theme that occurs throughout the text‚ with relation towards the positionality of the narrator. In taking a linguistic approach‚ the paper intends to use stylistic analysis to substantiate literary interpretation. Building upon that plane‚ there will be illumination upon the actuality of an elephant with the symbolistic representation of imperialism as the
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