Is society accounted for the actions of a single person? In the passage “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell I feel that Orwell was not justified for shooting the elephant but who was pressured into killing it by the power of the people. The people who George Orwell was supposed to be rulling, ruled him. Orwell did not want to shoot the elephant but the feelings he had and the way he was mistreated by the people of Burma he had no choice but to listen to them. “As soon as I saw the elephant perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him” When Orwell saw the elephant for the first time he knew that it wasn’t being dangerous, it was peacefully eating grass.
After reading, “Shooting an Elephant”, many questions came to my head at the end of the story. My first question was if the man deep inside felt like he shouldn’t have shot the elephant, then why did he? “I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot.” (George Orwell) this sentence tells me that the police officer was going against what he believed in just to make the 2000 plus crowd happy. I firmly disagree with this decision, one because I do not partake in killing massive animals such as the elephant, and two because if he knew deep down how he felt about killing the creature he shouldn’t have done it. I was very shocked by his gory decision to be honest.
But one day he is called out by another police officer in the town, because there is an aggressive elephant loose in the city. He starts walk true the city streets to find the elephant but as he walks he started thinking about what he would do when he finds the elephant, because the locals expect him to do the job, which is to shot the elephant. There is a law in Burma fore these sorts of situations. If you can’t control your animal it is in the right of the police to shot it. But this is not what he would prefer to do.
One should always do the proper and moral thing. In “Shooting an Elephant” the police officer fails to do so even though he knew from the beginning that it would have been the right thing to do. He clearly exclaims that he “…did not want to shoot the elephant” (11) but his self-conscience made him kill it. In “First they came for the Jews”, the man failed to do the proper and moral thing as well for the reason that “I was not a…” Jew or a communist or a trade unionist but he was only himself, which in the end left him with no one. However, there is also a difference in how the characters dealt with the situation.
This has a strong impact on Orwell when a working elephant escapes from its owners’ home and begins to terrorize a local village, killing a man. The owner of the elephant, and the only one who can control it, is looking for the elephant but in the wrong direction, and is about twelve hours away. When the elephant is located grazing in a nearby field, Orwell has to decide whether or not to shoot the elephant or wait for the owner’s return. The added pressure of the locals behind Orwell, some of whom want the meat from the elephant and others just hopeful to see a European being crushed to death by the elephant, make it much more difficult for him to reach a decision. In the end Orwell reluctantly decides to shoot the elephant “solely to avoid looking a fool” (479) in front of the Burmese people.
After being asked by curt why he is not afraid of being caught by police, he answers "Statistical fact, cops will never pull a real man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man, they know he sees further than they and will bind them with ancient logics." By his answer, he seems to have uncommon, but keen thinking, which is also shown as the movie progresses, even affecting where the plot goes. On the way
He understands that the will of the crowd demands the death of the elephant despite his unwillingness to shoot the animal. Conflict The narrator’s inner struggle of shooting an elephant, He has to choose between being laughed of and being seen as a fool or shooting an elephant which he does not intend to do. Style The essay exhibits a certain structure, which is very notable. That of meditation and action; it starts with reflection, tells part of the story, reflects further, offers its climax, and then ends with a final reflection. Broken up by the narrator’s reflections on the events he is remembering.
The mayor was offended by most of the catalogue which includes dead animals, a human statue made of blood, and, the one he found most offensive, the Virgin Mary depicted using a piece of elephant manure on a cloth. Mayor Giuliani says, ‘You do not have the right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion. (561)’ What he means is that the government is not going to pay the museum to have this portrait stained with elephant compost in its exhibit when so many people have a strong religious belief in the Virgin Mary and see this as defiling their beliefs. With a $23 million annual budget, the museum receives close to $7 million annually in operating cost from the city. The city provides more than 30 percent of the annual cost and has set aside almost $20 million more to do work on the museum.
Orwell goes on to explain, that his initial shot did not put the animal down, and after shooting multiple rounds into the animal it still took time for death to come. As tragic as the shooting, suffering, and death of the elephant can seem, they are not the pieces that makes up the foundation in Orwell’s story. Taking a deeper look, one will see that Orwell uses environment, animosity, and outside pressure as his foundational reasons in “Shooting an Elephant”. Orwell began his story with “In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people—the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me (Orwell 572). Orwell starts by communicating to the audience that at that particular time he finds himself in an unhappy place, not only a physical place, but a
Orwell puts his own feelings aside to please the villagers and kills the elephant. Although Orwell thought he had legally done the right thing, he should have gone with his first instinct and observed the elephant in hopes that it was done with its rampage so that he could avoid killing the elephant, and if it weren’t, then Orwell would have been doing the right thing when shooting the elephant. George Orwell was a native of British India, 1903-1950. “George Orwell was a master of wit and satire, critically observing the politics of his time and prophetically envisioning the future. He devoted much of his life to various causes critical of capitalism, imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, but in the end what he “most wanted to do is to make political writing into an art.“ (C.D Merriman) His real name was Eric Blair and George Orwell was his pen name.