Shooting An Elephant

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1. Although Orwell does not say exactly how much time passes between him seeing the dead man, sending for his gun and actually shooting the elephant, Orwell does inform the reader that it took 30 minutes for the elephant to die after he had shot him several times. Starting with finding the dead man up to shooting the elephant the events probably happened very quickly. When he saw the dead man and sent for an elephant rifle Orwell mentioned it only took several minutes and the elephant was less than 100 meters away from the elephant at that point. When Orwell fires the first and second shot the elephant did not hit the ground, only after the third shot did the elephant collapse. Orwell then tries to put the elephant out of its misery by firing his pistol several times, but the elephant still continued to live. 2. The first two paragraphs set the scene and tone for the readers to have a better understanding of the events that will happen. Orwell feels like an outcast rebel, he wants the Burmese to stand up against the British Empire. Young Orwell sets the tone of how he is torn between doing his job and doing what was morally and ethically right. (shooting the elephant or letting it live) 3. Some analogies that Orwell uses are: the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow, grandmotherly. They watched me like a conjurer about to perform a trick. Here I was, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd- seemingly the leading actor in this piece, an absurd puppet. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theater curtain go up at last….. 4. In paragraphs 11 and 12 Orwell uses several sensory details to explain the death of the elephant. The first bullet made the elephant looked stricken, immensely old and paralazied. As the elephant fell flabbily knees, his mouth slobbered and

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