Compare and contrast the attitudes towards imperialism in Kipling's "White Man's
Burden" and Orwell's "Shooting the Elephant."
Kipling's "White Man's Burden," was written after the end of the Spanish-American War as pro-colonization propaganda. The Spanish-American War was fought over colonies like the Philippines, where the poem takes place. The piece glorifies the struggles of a white man, colonizing indigenous people. In George Orwell's piece, "Shooting the Elephant," the main character is a sub-divisional police officer, stationed in Burma. It is about his experience with the Burmese people, as a white man in authority. Both works describe the "white man's" experience with colonization but the complexity in "Shooting an Elephant," details
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He selflessly burdens colonization, at his own expense, for ungrateful native people. However, that is not how imperialism is expressed in the short story. The officer despises colonization and is secretly sided with the Burmese people. He understands that he isn't the appropriate authority figure and acknowledges his inexperience and lack of education. He still dislikes the Burmese for how they treat him and refers to them using derogatory language. However, he recognizes his contribution in a larger global injustice, "The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who has been flogged with bamboos - all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt." He is also part of a third culture that developed over time between the colonizers and the colonized. They didn't live their lives separately, instead their lives inevitably blended together. The Burmese people also have more power than the indigenous people in "White Man's Burden." In the short story, the officer is driven by the Burmese, because he didn't want to face shame. He did what they wanted out of his own insecurity, but also for his safety. He was surrounded by a large group of people, that disliked him, and they were all willing him to kill the elephant and he understood that their will was more powerful than his
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” is a short story that not only shows cultural divides and how they affect our actions, but also how that cultural prejudice may also affect other parties, even if, in this story, that other party may only be an elephant. Orwell shows the play for power between the Burmese and the narrator, a white British police-officer. It shows the severe prejudice between the British who had claimed Burma, and the Burmese who held a deep resentment of the British occupation. Three messages, or three themes, from Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” are prejudice, cultural divide, and power.
The author desires to be accepted into the native's lives; no longer a social outcast. However, with this desire comes the knowledge that the group may or may not be correct in their brutal quest for blood. “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell demonstrates one man's moralistic battle between his own belief of preservation of life against that of the crowd of natives which spur him to kill the beast. The author is incited in his actions by the large, unanimous crowd looming eagerly behind him. The sheer size of the group of Burmese natives creates an illusion of strength in numbers that can be hard to fight.
The essay “Shooting an Elephant,” was written by George Orwell. Orwell was a British author best known for his essays and novels. In “Shooting an Elephant,” the title essay of his 1950 collection, Orwell is a British Police Officer in Lower Burma. After an elephant comes rampaging through the village in must, killing an Indian man, Orwell is looked upon to take care of the problem. The intense scene causes Orwell to make a crucial decision, reflecting on the vicious imperialism with the military in Burma during this time. The author portrays his feelings through the theme of the narrative with feelings such as, guilt, hate, and pressured.
“The White Man’s Burden” served as a message for the western world to no longer accept imperialism as their “burden”. With his medley of sarcastic and ironic language, Kipling shows how imperialism hurts both the colonizer and the colonized. The vile deeds conducted by the westerners on the natives for labor was brutal, while the colonized often rebelled violently against the colonizer. This poem could have be seen as an encouragement for the westerners to go against the norm and create a better world to live in; a world without imperialism.
A police officer in the British Raj, the supposedly 'unbreakable'; ruling force, was afraid. With his gun aimed at a elephant's head, he was faced with the decision to pull the trigger. That officer was George Orwell, and he writes about his experience in his short story, 'Shooting an Elephant';. To save face, he shrugged it off as his desire to 'avoid looking the fool'; (George Orwell, 283). In truth, the atmosphere of fear and pressure overwhelmed him. His inner struggle over the guilt of being involved in the subjugation of a people added to this strain, and he made a decision he would later regret enough to write this story.
Without actions, thoughts are just seeds without water, destined to die. Even with water, a plant may never reach its fullest potential. A plant could become six inches instead of six feet, it all depends on the amount of water. The seed that gets all the water it deserves will blossom and may never die, while the same seed that gets no water might as well never exist. Using water, seeds are transformed into plants. Seeds have grown into democracy, equality, and all that is good and bad in the world. In the end, it is all about the water (actions) that transforms the seed (ideas) to the kind of plant (result) that it will grow into. The quote by John Ruskin, “What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.
In this story ,Orwell is taking part in imperialism by proving his power and dignity to the natives presenting imperialism metaphorically through the use of animals. He is using the elephant as a symbol of imperialism representing power as an untamed animal that has control over the village. He uses a large and very powerful animal to represent a significant metaphor for imperialism.. In doing so he leads to the understanding that the power behind imperialism is only as strong as its dominant rulers. Orwell?s moral values are challenged in many different ways, ironically enough while he too was the oppressor. He is faced with a very important decision of whether or not he should shoot the elephant. If he does so, he will be a hero to his people. In turn, he would be giving in to the imperial force behind the elephant that he finds so unjust and evil. If he lets the elephant go free and unharmed the natives will laugh at him and make him feel inferior for not being able to protect the...
In “Shooting an Elephant,” the main character, a “foreigner” in another country, who is hated by the native people. When put on the spot, when everyone was interested in him for once. He caves and does what everyone expects of him. I believe everyone, at one time or another has felt this way. I felt this way in middle school. The shortest, shyest, and slowest person in the grade, me. I don’t think my peers hated me, but I wasn’t the most popular person of whom everyone knew. I constantly felt pressured by my parents to get the perfect grades. I caved into the pressure and worked harder to get the good grades they wanted. Even though I had good enough grades to pass and feel good about, mainly high “B’s,” a couple “C’s,” and one “A.” Even though
He was experiencing what it was like to represent someone he did not want to be. He wanted the Burmese people to like him but he still needed to represent the British as a police officer. With his job duties as an officer, he had to react to the elephant getting loose. He had to be a leader and figure out how to handle the situation that was unfolding. Once the elephant was found it was no longer a threat, however, he was still expected to do something because the elephant had killed a man. He had to go against his moral decision not to kill the elephant just to keep from looking like a fool to the people. He was able to justify his decision in shooting the elephant because a man was
This essay will compare and contrast two different essays one is written by George Orwell “Shooting an Elephant” and “Am I Blue?” by Alice Walker. The settings of both places are different “Shooting an Elephant” takes place in a country in Asia called Burma. In “Am I Blue?” the setting takes place in a house in the country side that stood over the edge of the meadow near the mountains. The Characters in “Am I Blue?” are the white horse name blue and Walker, who spotted Blue from the window of her home.
The British police officer in Shooting an Elephant had never been respected by the Burman natives a day in his life. He was regularly mocked and cheated, even by the religious students of Burma, simply because he was one of the many enforcers of their imposed oppressor’s government. When the elephant went on a “must”, he found himself in an interesting position. The very natives who had always jeered and spat at him were cheering him on. Suddenly, he is faced with the choice between his personal morality and the ever so f...
I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool." So ends George Orwell's poignant reminiscence of an incident representing the imperialist British in Burma. Unlike Soyinka, who wrote about colonialism from the African's point of view, Orwell, like Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness, presents the moral dilemmas of the imperialist. Orwell served with the Imperialist Police in Burma while it was still part of the British Commonwealth and Empire. His service from 1922 to 1927 burdened himwith a sense of guilt about British colonialism as well a need to make some personal expiation for it (Norton 2259). "Shooting an Elephant" chronicles an incident in which Orwell confronts a moral dilemma and abandons his morals to escape the mockery of the native Burmans. He repeatedly shoots and kills an elephant which had ravaged a bazaar and scared many Burmans even though "As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him" (6).
The glorious days of the imperial giants have passed, marking the death of the infamous and grandiose era of imperialism. George Orwell's essay, Shooting an Elephant, deals with the evils of imperialism. The unjust shooting of an elephant in Orwell's story is the central focus from which Orwell builds his argument through the two dominant characters, the elephant and its executioner. The British officer, the executioner, acts as a symbol of the imperial country, while the elephant symbolizes the victim of imperialism. Together, the solider and the elephant turns this tragic anecdote into an attack on the institution of imperialism.
George Orwell, other wise known as Eric Arthur Blair, is a well known British author. He spent a total of five years as an officer to the India Imperial police. This experience led him to resign and later become an author. In Orwell 's Shooting an Elephant, he describes this experience with the use of multiple symbolic characters. He uses items such as the gun used to shoot the elephant, the town’s people that watch him, and even the elephant itself to hold a specific symbolic meaning.
"Shooting an Elephant" is perhaps one of the most anthologized essays in the English language. It is a splendid essay and a terrific model for a theme of narration. The point of the story happens very much in our normal life, in fact everyday. People do crazy and sometimes illegal moves to get a certain group or person to finally give them respect. George Orwell describes an internal conflict between his personal morals and his duty to his country to the white man's reputation. The author's purpose is to explain the audience (who is both English and Burmese) about the kind of life he is living in Burma, about the conditions, circumstances he is facing and to tell the British Empire what he think about their imperialism and his growing displeasure for the imperial domination of British Empire.