From the very beginning of Shooting An Elephant, George Orwell demonstrates ambivalence through his affiliations with Imperialist Britain, his sense of self among the Burmese, and his ties to the elephant. In the second paragraph, Orwell says: “All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.” We learn early in the essay that Orwell hates imperialism and the Burmans, already making him ambivalent. Although Orwell hates being a British official, he has a constant need to feel important and needed by the Burmans. Therefore, he is excited when called to help with a loose elephant rampaging in the bazaar. Throughout the piece, we experience Orwell’s internal conflict between the imperialist police force he is working for, and the rude Burmans people he is forced to deal with on a daily basis.
He emphasizes his “intolerable sense of guilt” (313), but also his contradictory hatred of the Burmese, those “evil-spirited little beasts” (314), as well as his callous disregard for the native man killed by the elephant (319). When Orwell reveals he was “glad” over this death, since it protected him from legal action from the elephant’s owner, this detail is typical of how the author generalizes from his own earlier experience to that of other colonizers: the young Orwell’s callousness shows his personal degradation, but since his reaction is shared by all the young white colonizers, his reaction is clearly produced by the inhuman system they are all trapped within (319). The essay’s causal development and personal detail lead naturally to Orwell’s conclusions, which arise out of his shooting of the elephant. When Orwell finds himself with 2,000 Burmese villagers standing behind him, a rifle in his hands, the now-quiet elephant in front of him, he knows there is no reason to the shoot the animal, but he does so, realizing that it is he who is dominated and subjugated, not the colonized. He shoots the elephant, he says later, to
But he is one of those oppressors because he works for the British, but he also feels oppressed with guilt by seeing the torture they bring to these people. Orwell has a torn mindset and explains that this is one of the results of imperialism. He also uses similes in his story to make the reader understand and visualize the occurrence. The most important similes he used was when he explained how the elephant fell, “like a rock toppling” and “his trunk reaching as a tree”, and how he vividly compared the blood coming from the elephant with a thick red velvet. It just seems that Orwell is just describing the elephant but the elephant is more like an extended metaphor or a symbol of Imperialism.
Throughout is powerful speech he uses emotional appeals and rhetorical questions to get his ideas across. Henry uses emotional appeal by expressing how much the colonists have been hurt and wronged by the British government. Simply by expressing how much Britain has placed soldiers and naval fleets around the colonies makes there a perception that Britain does not trust the colonies and must guard them like a prison not giving them any rights. Also, by asking rhetorical questions about simple human rights and freedom he puts the listeners into a mindset that they have been wronged. He does not always say exactly what Britain has done but rather mentions their government and then asks a rhetorical question about the man’s freedom.
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.
It is reports that they drink liquor and break windows. And they no longer believe in elephants” (Imprints, 106). This is criticizing the government by saying they are untrustworthy, and when lied to by your own powers, you lose faith in control by them. Deceiving is undoubtedly the central topic in this satirical allegory. Ecological welfare is what the theme portrays to be in He-y Come on Ou-t.
The biography goes into detail about how Agricola made it to a victory against the forces of Calgacus in the Battle of Mons Grapius and his unexpected murder of a jealous emperor Domitian. In the Agricola there are two speeches that are opposed to Roman expansion, the Britons (61 AD) and Calgacus (83 AD), and represent how Tacitus portrays his resistance to Roman imperialism. The following paper will examine the aims and assumptions from the speeches of Calgacus and the Britons in the Agricola and compare them with the anti-imperialistic assumptions from the essay Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell. The comparison being, demonstration of similarities and differences of anti-imperialism, and their aims and assumptions between the two passages. The essay will also provide evidence as to why Tacitus’ depiction of anti-Roman Briton’s motives, does not fit with the portrayal of the British Empire in the Orwells Shooting and Elephant text.
In Erdrich's work, she displays the white people very critically by using quotes from the John Wayne movie she uses in her her poem, such as “It is / not over, this fight, not as long as you resist. / Everything we see belongs to us.” (Erdrich 12). This direct attack on the whites from the film gives a glimpse into how Erdrich feels that the white men are the sole reason that the Native American culture has almost been destroyed. She feels that the whites' greed and aggressive nature forced the destruction of the traditions and values that the Native American people once had. Alexie, on the other hand, feels that the blame falls more on the actual people of the new Native American generations becoming more like the white men on their own accord.
Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird and The Hunger Games we see societies, oppressed by their relative institutions, which hold them captive. While the society within Maycomb County oppresses the rights and liberties of the outcasts from society, the Capitol oppresses the individuals and society of Panem. Changing rights and freedoms of individuals through the institution has the ability to grant individuals liberty while oppressing the freedoms of
Many societies face racial discrimination, but it is only those who are willing to stand up for what they believe in that can really change how things progress. In this case, Gandhi’s revolt is a virtue due to the fact that he is standing up for a greater cause by opposing a racial system that brings pain to the everyday lives of Indians. As Gandhi is burning peoples’ passes, a fellow officer beats him cruelly with a stick without fighting back. Gandhi expresses his ideals on the issues associated with the racial discrimination demonstrated by burning Indians’ border passes through nonviolent methods. By doing so, he is brutally beaten for stating his own opinion, which by law he