When young Hughes is the last child on the bench he experienced several feelings that he shared. First there is the feeling of anticipation, He expects that any minute Jesus would come to him and he would be saved but nothing happened, the Lamb of God did not come. According to the text, it says “I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing!”
Then he felt ashamed because the entire church was waiting on him to be saved before ending the service. This is supported when he said, “Now it was really getting late. I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up for so long.”
In the end he felt pressured to do what was expected of him, to receive Jesus and be saved. That pressure led him to do something that he did not set out
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First, he felt anticipation, the crowd was expecting him to shoot the elephant and he was waiting for the moment to come when he would actually have to do it. This was expressed when he said, “and suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it.”
Then Orwell felt ashamed of himself, here he was, the policeman with the rifle who is expected to come and help the natives by taking care of the problem. He was undecided as to when was the right time to actually shoot the elephant. According to the text, it says, “ For it is a condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the natives and so in every crisis he has to do what the natives expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant.”
In the end he felt pressured by the crowd to do what was expected of him although he did not want to do it. He expressed this when he said “But I did not want to shoot the elephant.” The pressure from the crowd was evident, they were waiting for the end when the elephant was shot and was not going anywhere until this happened. The pressure from the crowd helped him to make the decision to shoot the elephant after
By this point, however, a large crowd of Burmese are pointedly watching and waiting for action to be taken. When Orwell does shoot the elephant, it is merely because of this expectation. Orwell emphasizes this by writing, "And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind" (Orwell, 327). After he shoots the elephant, the elephant proceeds to die slowly and torturously, mainly due to Orwell's lack of experience killing large animals.
The first text by George Orwell entitled, “Shooting an Elephant” shows how peer pressure greatly influenced him in making his final decision. While George made his way to where the elephant was spotted he stated, “I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. I was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute.” (Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, page 1322) With two thousand people around wanting him to shoot and kill an “innocent looking” would be peer pressure to say the least. Orwell then states, “I did not want to shoot the elephant” (Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, page 1323) However, in the end, with the large crowd drooling over the excitement of seeing an elephant being shot, Orwell shot the elephant. Technically the elephant did go on a rampage, killing a man in the process, but now the elephant had calmed down. The reason the elephant was in suc...
In the essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, George Orwell retells his experiences and feelings of being disrespected as a sub-divisional police officer in Moulmein, Burma. Early one morning, In the lower part of Burma, an elephant was reported ravaging the bazaar. As Orwell’s curiosity persuades him to go investigate the elephant, the author sees the damage that the elephant left behind. He prepares out of fear to “murder” the elephant with an elephant rifle. In doing this he excited the Burmese, who led a crowd behind Orwell, encouraging him to shoot the elephant who was now no more harmless than a cow. Orwell’s diction and actions, shows a complex tone towards the natives through his loyalties, his use of racist slurs, and his struggle with power and control.
Some two thousand Burmese were trailing right behind Police Officer Orwell, expecting to get vengeance for the man that the elephant killed. Orwell is first pressured just by their mere presence. Only a few moments pass before Orwell comes to terms with what he thinks is the best alternative as he stated, “And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.” (327) In addition, he felt subjected to shoot the animal; the Burmese were finally supporting him, and he couldn 't give that up even if that meant doing something against his better
involving an elephant. The fate of the elephant lies in his hands. Only he can
Unbeknownst to the reader and younger Orwell at the time, the elephant was merely going through must, a seasonal frenzied state of mind of male elephants, and typically is far calmer. However, without knowing this information, just like Orwell, one would be taken aback by Orwell’s description of the elephant. Although Orwell insinuates that the Orwell is a ghastly beast by describing the carcass of one of the elephant’s victims mangled bodies lying with its “arms crucified” with an “expression of unendurable agony;”(Orwell) nevertheless he is quick to juxtapose the elephant's rampage to how the elephant really is by describing the serenity as it was “peacefully eating” with a “grandmotherly air.” In contrast with the elephant’s aforementioned bloodlust, the elephant Without delay Orwell proceeds to retell the events when younger Orwell succumbed to the will of the masses and shot the elephant.
The people despised him. He speaks of being 'hated by large numbers of people'; and the 'sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere..." (Orwell, 276). As one man, how could he dare to go against them? Two thousand could easily overtake one. They would not have aided him, should anything go wrong, and eagerly anticipated that eventuality. He describes his fear that they would watch him be '…pursued, caught, trampled on, and reduced to a grinning corpse…'; should the elephant charge (Orwell, 281).
he tried his best to ignore the pressure and to choose what would be best for
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...
George Orwell is just a pen name for Eric Arthur Blair. He wrote many novels from inspirations around the world. He was born in India but was a British author. A good amount of that inspiration came from being an India Imperial policeman. Shooting an Elephant contains a variety of symbols like the rifle, the elephant, and the imperialism which gives the reader an insight into his essay.
While he was obtaining a rifle and following the elephant, more people continued to trail behind him, eventually growing to become a crowd of more than two-thousand. Knowing that the force behind him was much greater than his own, it was distracting him and knew “…even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind”. The pressure from his military duty was eating away at him as well, thinking to himself “the crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the east, was one long struggle not to be laughed at”. Afterwards, the old soldiers believed he did the right thing because he was doing his duty by resolving a casualty; the young soldiers thought "it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie" because the elephant had already calmed down and the owner was not present. Relying on optimism, Orwell in the end was content with the casualty and saw his actions legally justified because of
When he finial find the elephant Orwell say “I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him.” But when he lays his eyes on the crowd he changes his stance to “but I did not want to shoot the elephant.”(Orwell 199). He felt guilty for shooting the elephant when he describe that the elephant worth more alive than dead, but despite the many reason not to shoot the elephant, he took a shot. Orwell describes “when I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick …I fired again into the same spot…I fired a third time. That was the shot that did it for him.”(199) the shooting of the elephant represent the Burma people trying to stay alive and over powering by the
Throughout "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell, he addresses his internal battle with the issues of morality and immorality. He writes of several situations that show his immoral doings. When George Orwell signed up for a five-year position as a British officer in Burma he was unaware of the moral struggle that he was going to face. Likewise, he has an internal clash between his moral conscious and his immoral actions. Therefore, Orwell becomes a puppet to the will of the Burmese by abandoning his thoughts of moral righteousness. This conflicts with the moral issue of relying upon other's morals, rather than one's own conscience.
Unanticipated choices one is forced to make can have long-lasting effects. In "Shooting an Elephant," by George Orwell, the author 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.
Morally, I think this story clearly states that people would do anything to avoid being embarrassed. From my understanding, I think that this story teaches us that we should be open to hear people?s opinions but we should follow our instincts. We should not allow others to make the decisions for us. The police officers just shoot the elephant because people wanted him to do so. This essay is trying to help us to see that we should look at the pros and cons of an issue rather than making a quick decision that can affect someone. I cannot condemn the author for shooting the elephant, though he knew it was wrong. Nor can I condemn him for giving in to the natives and not sticking to his guns. He does not want to appear foolish to others like all of us do.