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.
The Burman people kept on provoking Orwell to shoot the elephant. “I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistbly” Orwell felt as if he was being over powerd by their will to shoot the elephant, which motivated him that he really had to shoot the elephant. He knew in reality he was an only a puppet, as a white man he had to impress the natives so he had to do what the natives except of him. Many thoughts came through Orwells mind while he stands thier with the rifle in his hands “A sahib has to act like a sahib; he has got to appear
George Orwell’s essay ‘Shooting an Elephant’ presents remarkable insights of human mind and human nature. The story mainly focuses on Orwell’s behavior under peer pressure. “Should I shoot the elephant or should I not?” or “Will I lose face with these people if I don’t shoot the elephant?” First, Orwell expresses the pressure he feels as an Anglo- Indian, European imperial policeman in Burma. He would give in to what he thought the people of Burma wanted, not what he wanted. But secretly, he hated where he lived, he hated the government in Burma.
He describes the destruction that the elephant caused, including the death of a villager (68). After being on an all day rampage, the elephant was found calmly feeding in a paddy field (68). Now that Orwell has found the elephant, he now has to decide what he must do next. Orwell is torn between his own feelings about the morality of killing the elephant and doing what the villagers expect him to do. Orwell puts his own feelings aside to please the villagers and kills the elephant.
Broken up by the narrator’s reflections on the events he is remembering. The increasing size of the crowd thus also functions as part of the story, the size of the crowd serves as a type of pressure to the narrator’s decision of shooting an elephant. Point of view An assumed first person point of view. Narrator is telling an event that occurred sometime in the past. Narrator directly reports the impressions and thoughts that he experienced at the time of the elephant shooting.
In the two readings, Journal of the First Voyage to America and Shooting an Elephant, the authors, Christopher Columbus and George Orwell, had two very different views of the inhabitants of the locations they were in with Columbus being in San Salvador and Orwell being in Burma. The cause of the different views could be that where Orwell was he had been living with them and had to deal with all of their insults and criticisms because he was a British policemen who was there to enforce all of the rules established by Britain in the area and this caused many people to fear and despise him because of his job. But, in the location where Columbus was he was just visiting the land and was there to befriend the peoples so that they would have good
Kaz Kim Nov. 7th 2010 WR97 Analytical Summary Analytical Summary: Shooting an Elephant In "Shooting an Elephant," by George Orwell, Orwell recounts an event from his life when he was about twenty years old during which he had to choose the lesser of two evils. Many years later, the episode seems to still haunt him. The story takes place at some time during the five unhappy years Orwell spends as a British police officer in Burma. He detests his situation in life, and when he is faced with a moral dilemma, a valuable work animal has to die to save his pride. Orwell begins to show his inner conflict by stating how he feels about being a European imperial policeman.
But this is not what he would prefer to do. After he finds the big elephant he have gather a big audience of the locals that all are excited to see what he is going to do. He can feel that they would like him to shot the animal and he also starts to think that this could be an opportunity for him to get some popularity among the locals. So he decides to use all his bullets to shot the elephant, but the big animal is still not dead. This results in that the elephant gets a slow and very painful death.
Jade Paul Dr. Jackson AP Lang Period 7 15 September 2013 Murder For The Purpose of Image By the end of George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, Orwell being a police officer representing the imperialistic government, makes a final decision to kill an elephant that has caused destruction throughout a village in Burma. Orwell was not respected by the people he was protecting and in his mind he was trying to keep peace throughout the village, but instead created a disturbance by being in Burma. The people look at Orwell as someone coming from the British government to contain the people and make sure violence and resistance does not outbreak. Orwell tries to change this image of himself in their eyes by killing the elephant but in reality it just inserted more fear into the people. The elephant was used as a display to the people that they should fear Orwell and his authority to intimidate the people.
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.