By the end of the 19th century, European free trade imperialism included much of Asia and Africa within a swiftly growing world mercantilist economy. Europeans entered these uncharted areas with the intention of dominating the indigenous society, which swiftly alienated the two societies and formed new dual, segregated societies. Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” and George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” outlined this social order and class rivalry presented between the British Empire and the native people. Gandhi’s letter to Lord Irwin supported this view as well, by looking into the dual societies within the context that the British isolated the native society from the economic hegemony that the British enjoyed. Together, Kipling, Orwell, and Gandhi provided a detailed account of the British prejudice within dual colonial society through the social and economic hegemony they held. Orwell’s essay demonstrated the British supremacy against the colonized as it revealed how insignificant their deaths were. Being a police superintendent in Burma, Orwell was called when an otherwise tame elephant ran rampant. In his search for the animal, he stumbled upon a dead Burman, who was trampled by the elephant, and referred to him as a “black Dravidian coolie.” Oxford dictionary defined a coolie as “an offensive term for an unskilled native labourer in an Asian country.” At the end of the essay, Orwell tracked down the elephant and killed it. When the discussion arose about the shooting, a young British man said he was in the wrong by justifying that even “an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie”. Yet, Orwell stood by his actions, as he stated “I was very glad that the coolie had been killed…it gave me a suffic... ... middle of paper ... ...rgely, Kipling believed that if imperialist nations like the British Empire did not take over, utter chaos would commence without civilizing conquerors. The white overloads continued to reign supreme as they expected the colonial subjects to avidly embrace the violent, debasing imperialist desires. However, the quixotic Englishmen that did venture into these unknown lands to civilize the natives became internally torn. George Orwell dehumanized a man as an alibi to his killing, but still understood the natives’ attitudes as reasonable. Yet, this mutually shared distaste for each other both fueled and necessitated a barrier between the two cultures. This dual society painted a portrait of high tension and developed repercussions of calls of injustice and uprisings that eventually expelled the British Empire from India and Africa and gave the nations self-dominion.
In Orwell’s reflective narrative, “Shooting an Elephant”, he reveals the truth on imperialism. Through the utilization of irony and the method of appeals, Orwell shows the reader that imperialism is just a definition because the people are in control, not Britain.
Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” articulates the imperialism of the English empire into India, Cambodia, China, and Africa. The English thought it their duty to go out and take over these barbaric nations to civilize them. They justified their act of westernizing and destroying others’ cultures as the “burden’ they were born to bear. “And when your goal is nearest the end for others sought, watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hopes to nought.” They blamed the ineffectiveness of their efforts on the native’s laziness. They are the ones whose whole world is being flipped upside down; being submerged in a new culture with new laws and strange people. Yet, somehow they are the lazy ones and despite the trails for the white man at the end of the day it is beneficial to the savages.
George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” was written as an attack on British imperialism and totalitarianism. Orwell recounts an experience of shooting an escaped elephant from his time as a policeman in Burma during the British Raj, utilizing a remorseful, reflective tone. He observes that “When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys” (14), and that “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it” (14). Orwell is not only correct in his assertion that totalitarianism is harmful, he further explains how it is detrimental to all those that are umbrellaed under it.
Orwell speaks of how he is so against imperialism, but gives in to the natives by shooting the elephant to prove he is strong and to avoid humiliation. He implies that he does not want to be thought of as British, but he does not want to be thought the fool either. Orwell makes his decision to shoot the elephant appear to be reasonable but underneath it all he questions his actions just as he questions those of the British. He despised both the British Empire as well as the Burmese natives, making everything more complicated and complex. In his essy he shows us that the elephant represents imperialism; therefore, the slow destruction of the elephant must represent the slow demise of British Imperialism.
Orwell is a very complex man, he begins to contradict himself by saying he hates what imperialism does but chooses to work for that government. Even though he states that he hated his job, his actions show imperialism. When having the choice to kill or not to kill the elephant, he chose death. This here specifies how imperialism took over; oddly enough not by the government but by the people. The people staring and waiting for him to ki...
The ceaseless slaughter, which occurred on the Western Front during World War I, raised uncertainty among the colonies regarding Europe’s suitability to rule. Due to the unnecessary and extensive death of youth in Europe, the famous image of Europeans being superior and civilized beings slowly diminished. As a result, some of the top thinkers and political leaders among the colonized individuals of Africa and Asia openly criticized the Europeans and expressed their overall disillusionment with the West. In the excerpts on page 658 titled, “Lessons for the Colonized from the Slaughter in the Trenches,” the writers from these civilizations champion various aspects of their own culture, both explicitly and implicitly, as alternatives to the West;
From the beginning of the narrative “Shooting An Elephant,” George Orwell creates a character with a diminished sense of self. The character narrates, “I was hated by large numbers of people -- the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me” (Orwell, 58). All he wants is attention and it is evident that even negative attention is better than being ignored. He hates working for the British as a sub-divisional police officer in the town of Moulmein. He even makes it known to the audience that, “Theoretically -- and secretly, of course -- I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British” (58). The character knows he does not want to be in this position, as a Anglo-Indian
...upporting imperialism and the motivations behind their actions. Orwell, by admitting that his motive for killing the innocent beast was brought on by his own will to avoid humiliation at the hands of the locals means that Orwell is able to recognize the. With Orwell the oppression of the British on the Burmese people caused direct harm to Orwell. It is because of this cruelty found in humans that Orwell places emphasis in his essay on the unjustified violence inflicted on the elephant, who wrongly received judgement from the imperialistic response of Orwell to combat his own inner demons with the locals.
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.
...w claim their British idenity, yet in the beginning of the colonizing process they had to prove their Britishness. Their ability to speak the language, understand the culture and adopt the religion were all ways they could claim their Britishness. The strong influence of the British in their colonies was inevitable because if people live together, there will be interaction and that will lead to the exchange of ideas. This exchange of ideas lead to the development of a British identity among the colonized. This exchange wasn't one-sided as this interaction lead to the British discovering, understanding and sometimes adopting the ideas of the people in their colony. Yet the claim of the colonized on British identity was not considered legitimate in the colonial times and was only recognized years later when the notion of racial superiority was somewhat obliterated.
Imperialism sprung from an altruistic and unselfish aim to "take up the white man's burden"1 and “wean [the] ignorant millions from their horrid ways.”2 These two citations are, of course, from Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, respectively, and they splendidly encompass what British and European imperialism was about – at least seen from the late-nineteenth century point of view. This essay seeks to explore the comparisons and contrasts between Conrad’s and Kipling’s view of imperialism in, respectively, Heart of Darkness and “White Man’s Burden” and “Recessional.”
In sum, through their dichotomies of the British and Indian relationship during the emergence of India to independence, Forster and Scott allow the reader to free themselves of their prejudices and open up to their views on historical culture. Forster ‘attaches to India through extravagant metaphorical meanings and anthropomorphisms’ whilst Orwell stated that he ‘didn’t do prophecy’ and that he would not ‘put anything into it that human societies have not already done.’
In 1936 George Orwell wrote a short story titled "Shooting an Elephant.” In it he discusses a fictional story of a man who kills an elephant and the implications that arise afterward. He relates it to British Imperialism and uses the individual's experiences as a reference to larger experiences that we all face. Many issues of the societal pressures and morality of killing arise over the death of the elephant as well as how the narrator’s identity was altered by his environment. While it appears to be a story of a rampant elephant being euthanized, George Orwell uses the story as an analogy to describe man's inner struggle between acceptance, morality, and the pursuit of power.
Through a modern lens, imperialists seems either incredibly naïve, like Chamberlain who genuinely though he was saving the Africans, or malicious like Kidd, who thought whites were destined to “exterminate” inferior races like the Africans (Kidd, in Armstrong 229). Yet, as seen in TFA, the realities of imperialism were much more ambiguous. Imperialists like Mr. Brown were benevolent, though not necessarily beneficial. Likewise, not all Africans were victims or saw imperialism as a negative development. Imperialism benefitted certain Africans like Nwoye and the osu. In the end, Achebe’s message about imperialism is best summed up by Obierka’s observation: “[the white man] does not even speak our tongue [.] But he says that our customs are bad” (Achebe 124). TFA shows that one of the main reasons imperialism was so harmful to the natives is the sometimes unintentional, sometimes deliberate lack of understanding of by the Europeans. Because they assumed that Africans were incomprehensible and inherently different, they decided that Africans needed outside help to become
This essay is about the effect of Colonialism seen in the book Things Fall Apart. Through out the whole book you can see different impressions on the tribe, many other people, and the relationships between the white man and the black man. "Does the white man understand our custom about land?" "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart." (Achebe, 17)