When you read the essay it is clear that it describes the experience of an English police officer that is very unpopular in the city of Burma. He hates his job very much because of all the locals. He is a white man living in a city where the Britain’s conquered in the earlier years. This English narrator could maybe be George Norwell himself. But one day he is called out by another police officer in the town, because there is an aggressive elephant loose in the city.
Orwell begins to show his inner conflict by stating how he feels about being a European imperial policeman. Orwell is an unhappy young policeman who lives in mental isolation. He hates British imperialism, he hates Burmese natives, and he hates his job. He is completely alone with his thoughts since he cannot share his idea that "imperialism was an evil thing"(pg.10) with his countrymen. Orwell sees the British rule as "an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down.
I was very shocked by his gory decision to be honest. “As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear.” (George Orwell) this sentence is evidence that if the officer did not like his job so much he should not have made such a serious decision in killing the elephant if he knew it was not morally correct. The elephant was not doing anything wrong the officer knew that which was so frustrating for me to read. Then he not only shot the elephant once, but multiple times. I could not believe he could do such a thing given the fact he somewhat had a heart in the beginning.
In the film, “The Elephant Man,” there are many scenes that represent realism and its entirety. In one of the scenes, Dr. Frederick Treves lets John Merrick know that there is nothing that the hospital can do to return him to normal. “No. We can care for you, but we can't cure you” (The Elephant Man.) After the doctor says this, John Merrick replies, “No.
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.
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.
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
Throughout the imperialism history, its rules and strategies have changed but the only thing that has not changed is the desire of making more money. The British Empire was one of the imperialistic powers, maybe the best one among them. British Empire was fulfilling properly being an imperialistic power. In the story of Orwell “Shooting an Elephant”, it is mentioned that a British officer lives among Burmese people and they do not like him. Nevertheless, all that is mentioned in the story is narrated by Orwell’s perspective.
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.
In the end Orwell reluctantly decides to shoot the elephant “solely to avoid looking a fool” (479) in front of the Burmese people. Living in Burma, Orwell tells the reader how the locals despise the European oppressors in their communities, jeering, spitting, and, mocking, in attempts to annoy and embarrass the British whenever possible. This hatred expressed in front of Orwell causes him equal animosity towards the Burmese people and his own country, Great Britain. Orwell feels the British are the oppressors saying at on point “I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors,