Commentary on Shooting an Elephant Essay

What is the Purpose of Shooting an Elephant?

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism- the real motives for which despotic governments act. George Orwell wrote this in his 1963 essay Shooting an Elephant. His two most famous works, 1984 and Animal Farm, both exemplify his avid stand against totalitarian and imperialistic forms of government, but in a fictional background. Shooting an Elephant, on the other hand, uses a personal experience to emphasize imperialism on a sociological and psychological level. I believe George Orwells purpose for writing, Shooting an Elephant was to express his feelings of imperialism using the tiny incident as a symbolic example of its true evil.

When called to the scene of an elephant that had gotten loose and killed its keeper, the officer of the British Empire, George Orwell, did not know what he was to do. A crowd of Burmese had seen him receive a rifle and shouted excitedly, thinking he was going to shoot the elephant. Little did the crowd know that shooting the elephant was not his intention, but he stated, I realized that I should have to shoot the elephantI could feel their two-thousand wills pressing me forward. He thought, if anything went wrong those two-thousand Burmese would see mereduced to a grinning corpsesome of them would laugh. While still debating whether he should shoot the elephant or leave it be, Orwell mentioned, a sahib must act like a sahib, he has got to appear resolute, to know his mind and do definite things. The tragedy is that the definite thing he did, which was eventually shooting the elephant, was unfavorable to his own interests. In turn, the ruler had become the puppet of the ruled, as Isacowitz stated, because the colonizer, or officers of the British Empire, had become dependent on the reactions of the subject, the Burmese. Because losing face is the greatest failure, Orwell is no freer than those around him.

Previously, Orwell had written that every white mans life in the East was a lifelong struggle to not be laughed at, so he had to make sure that his actions left the natives impressed. I say this after analyzing the quote that states, He shall spend his life trying to impress the natives, and so in every crisis he has got to do what the natives expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. Unfortunately for Orwell, his mask did truly grow to fit his face. The mask, in this instance, is a metaphor that refers to his position as a British police officer, which was a role he did not particularly enjoy because of his hatred for the Empire. The mask grew to fit his face when he made the decision to shoot the elephant to simply avoid cowardice. Whether Orwell would like to believe it or not, imperialism was part of who he was because he physically represented what he hated, and carried out actions that conformed to what the Burmese people wanted him to do. Another strong metaphor I noted was the elephant; a large, powerful animal. Through his description of the elephant's death and the havoc that it wreaked, Orwell illustrated the fact that the elephant is a symbol of imperialism. Orwell, then, is a symbol of the Burmese people who would much prefer their British colonizers to perish.

Because Orwell made up [his] mind that imperialism was an evil thing, I believe that Shooting an Elephant was written to alleviate his guilty conscious through a powerful literary work, while exploring the nature of British colonialism in Burma. J P Stevens wrote in an article, Through his hatred for his own position and his ambivalence towards the Burmese and the British, Orwell illustrates his obligation to both groups of people. He is employed as a tool for the British to control their conquests and a tool for the Burmese to achieve what they want. Although Orwell sympathized with the Burmese, he took it upon himself to let the crowds two-thousand wills compel him to kill a valuable working elephant. This action, in my eyes, is conformity to its fullest extent. As a police officer, his role is to carry out such an action, if it was deemed necessary, but the essay shows that it was completely unnecessary through this quote, he took no notice of you if you left him alone, and through descriptions of the elephant peacefully eating and looking no more dangerous than a cow.

It is unfortunate that Orwell had become an absurd puppet who carried out the will of the Burmese crowd that had followed him that day. His mask grew to fit his face, making him even less distinguishable from the British Empire he represented. I believe that his guilty conscious led him to create this essay to show how imperialistic evils had controlled who he was and what he did. He even admitted, I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the rightI often wondered whether others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a fool. The ruler did in fact become the puppet of the ruled.

Bibliography

Isacowitz, Roy. Sharon Shoots the Elephant 28 Jan. 2003

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~waterbuf/elephant.htm

Orwell, George. Shooting an Elephant The Blaire Reader: Exploring Contemporary Issues. Ed. Laurie G. Kriszner. New Jersey, 2008. 715-721.

Stevens, J P. Shooting an Elephant: Rhetorical Analysis 7 Jan. 2008