The Rhetorical Analysis Of George Orwell's Shooting An Elephant

Every day, each individual will look back on decisions he or she have made and mature from those experiences. Though it takes time to realize these choices, the morals and knowledge obtained from them are priceless. In George Orwell’s nonfictional essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, a young Orwell was stationed in Burma for the British imperial forces, tasked to deal with an elephant who destroyed various parts of the village Moulmein while its owner was away. Backed by second thoughts and a crowd of thousands, he finds himself shooting the elephant and reflecting that it was not justified; however, it was a choice pushed by his duty and the people. Written with a fusion of his young and old self’s outlook on shooting the elephant, Orwell’s essay is a sensational read that captivates his audience and leaves them questioning his decision. Initially, Orwell makes it evident to readers

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