The incident of shooting an elephant precipitates Orwell to insight further into the nature of imperialism, realizing how hollow and affected the declining British Raj is. Initially, Orwell doesn’t intend to shoot the elephant out of moral pity. But with thousands of expectant eyes fixed on him, he suddenly realizes he only has one choice to abandon morality and submit to the native’s expectation of a sahib. The moment he pulls the trigger, he is a victim of imperialism, losing his individual freedom of dependent judgment and choice for the sake of defending
But secretly, he hated where he lived, he hated the government in Burma. He also hated the people of Burma. Although he felt hatred for everything around him, he felt as if he had to go along with everything and everyone else just to live in peace. When the elephant situation aroused, he felt the peer pressure to shoot the elephant. Orwell, simply to avoid looking like a fool or what they consider to look like a fool, shoots the elephant.
Although Orwell brainstorms a logical plan in which he would test the elephant’s aggression prior to shooting it, he is unable to withstand the pressures of the natives who are surrounding him, wishing for the elephant to be put to wrest. While Orwell makes it evident to the reader the lack of power he feels although he is a British officer in a country controlled by Britain, he proves he will take any opportunity possible to gain a sense of power. With the eyes of thousands of natives on him, he is too intimidated to do anything other than what the crowd wants. In hopes of pleasing the demanding crowd, those who he is supposed to hold power over force him into action. By embracing his position of power, he is in turn controlled by the weak.
They feared Richard, and some of the white people felt it necessary to act out their racist feelings in order to cover up their fear. White coworkers beat Richard because his boss was kind to him. Richard later had to leave a good job because those racist co-workers would “kill” him. When the principal at Richard’s school had asked Richard to give a speech to a large audience of white and black people, Richard refused to read the principal’s prepared speech. By reading the principal’s speech, Richard was saying what the white power wanted him to say and to Richard this would be giving in to the very thing he hated so much.
However, personal experience is also a factor which impacts on every conflict, and from what the person has experienced from their own past, it can change the way that person views the other. Prejudice is a major issue which plays a huge role in the conflict of Twelve Angry Men, where Rose has this factor impacting on the play as a whole. The conflict in twelve Angry Men is one which explores the limits of racism, “one of them”, and displays many prejudice acts that meet the measures of life in 1950s America. Rose had the involvement of the jury, and the case its self, as an illustration of prejudiced actions and forms of personal behaviours
Race is an influential idea and a continuing concept, made-up by society. It has also fostered inequality and discrimination for centuries, as well as influencing how we relate to other human beings. A “stereotype” is an oversimplification about a person or a group of people. We utilize stereotypes when we are incapable or reluctant to attain all of the information we would need to make impartial judgments about people or situations. In the absence of detail, stereotyping in many situations allow us to arrive at a general conclusion of these groups.
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.
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,
The elephant was used as a display to the people that they should fear Orwell and his authority to intimidate the people. Evidence of imagery and similes were provided in the text to convey the author’s knowledge that doing the wrong thing will not create a better image in peoples’ eyes. The elephant was noted to demolish villagers’ houses, raid fruit stands, ate the stock, and brutally killed a man out of the excitement of escaping and breaking away from its owner. Looking closely at Orwell’s graphic use of imagery, he also uses a simile describing the body of the dead man. Orwell explains how people may be misled by the saying “the dead look peaceful” (Orwell 2) because most dead bodies he has seen look as if they die in agony.
Shooting an Elephant Summary ‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ begins with a meditative prelude to the action in which the narrator, who may be presumed to be Orwell, comments on being a colonial policeman in British Burma in the middle of the twentieth century. ‘‘I was hated by large numbers of people,’’ he says, and ‘‘anti-European feeling was very bitter.’’ A European woman crossing the market would likely be spat upon and a subdivisional police officer made an even more inviting target. Once, at a soccer match, a Burmese player deliberately fouled the narrator while the Burmese umpire conveniently looked the other direction and the largely Burmese crowd ‘‘yelled with hideous laughter.’’ The narrator understands such hatred and even thinks it justified, but he also confesses that his ‘‘greatest joy’’ at the time would have been to bayonet one of his tormenters. The action of ‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’ begins when the narrator receives a telephone report of an elephant ‘‘ravaging the bazaar.’’ He takes his inadequate hunting rifle and rides on horseback to the area where the animal allegedly lurks. The narrator remarks on the squalor and poverty of the neighborhood, with its palm-leaf thatch on the huts and unplanned scattering of houses over a hillside.