Rhetorical Analysis Of Shooting An Elephant By George Orwell

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Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is an essay about his experiences in Burma as a sub-divisional police offer while working for the British Empire in the 1920’s where it had imposed its power onto the Burmese. Orwell felt this strong disagreement with imperialism because how oppressed the Burmese were, but in a way of guilt and sympathy. To better understand what imperialism means we must get a clear definition of it; imperialism is the policy of extending power of a nation over another nation; with the addition of the possibility of economic and political gains through control. With Orwell having the position of being a police officer, he plays the role of being an oppressor and; and because of this, the Burmese look at him and make him – and other Europeans ¬– a target of hatred and frustration. And Orwell also uses a plethora of rhetorical strategies to explain his own sympathies and frustrations with the Burmese, but uses the elephant …show more content…

His then faces reality and then has a sudden epiphany, “… I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellowed faces behind” (Orwell 299). He never had a choice in the first place, like the Burmese, for they are just mere puppets on strings being controlled from a power thousands of miles away. Then he mentions that “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy…for this condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives” expect of him” (Orwell 299). This tidbit basically shows us that it is not the government who rules the people, but it’s the people native to the land who are in control – quite the opposite for what is supposed to happen. From the very beginning, he never had the choice of whether to kill the elephant or not, the Burmese

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